


RWBY Volume 2.5: Twin Dragons

by Benjinator12



Category: RWBY
Genre: Action/Adventure, Family, Friendship, Gen, School, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-11 04:45:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5614375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Benjinator12/pseuds/Benjinator12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After saving Vale from Torchwick's plan, Team RWBY find themselves in the crosshairs of the White Fang's number one enforcer, a crude thug who attended Signal Academy and was once friends with Yang. Will the team be able to overcome this powerful new opponent, and will Yang be able to confront the bleakest part of her past?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Great Serpent

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [RWBY Volume 2 Point 5: Twin Dragons](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/166117) by benji.dordoni. 



"A toast!"

Weiss held aloft her glass, and glared at the others until they did the same.

"To a job well done?" asked Blake.

"Yes, to a job well done. What else?"

Yang began to respond. "Well, it's just that… you see, we-"

"The job's not really done," sighed Ruby. Weiss lowered her glass, because she knew Ruby was right. They had successfully wiped out the Grimm that Torchwick's plan had released into the city. But they had no idea _why_.

"If anything, we just learned that we've got a lot more work to do," Blake sighed.

"Fine, then. How about a toast to _pretending_ that our job has been well done?"

This suggestion was met with more support, and the girls slugged back their soft drinks in a gesture with little remaining meaning. Having spent the day cleaning the city of Vale up from the battle, they needed food, which is why they found themselves in the dingiest corner of the only bar still open in town. The tables were greasy, and so were the fries, but they had decided that they were not going to drag themselves all the way back to campus before they had something to eat- sacrifices in quality were to be expected.

The food did its job, however, and the growling holes in their stomachs were quickly appeased. Weiss paid the bill and Yang left the tip, and soon the quartet was mobile again, walking into the dimly-lit night, the shattered moon overhead not unlike the city's new collection of ruined buildings. Ruby's foot took a keen interest in some of the newly-arranged, shadow-veiled rubble, and decided to topple her towards the ground. Yang dove forward, but was unable to catch her sister. The smaller huntress faceplanted across the sidewalk, letting out a defeated cry. Yang dropped to the ground herself, cradling her sister in her arms. Blake and Weiss sprinted back a few yards to join them.

"Oh, no! Are you okay?" asked Yang.

"I'm fine, sis," groaned Ruby, wiggling out of Yang's grip. "Just tired from everything."

A thin trickle of blood on her cheek was enough for Yang to disagree.

"Hold on- you need a bandage."

"And where are we supposed to get one?" Blake grumbled.

"I've always got some on me, for fights, you know. They're right here in my…" Yang placed her hand on her hip, feeling for something that wasn't there.

"Don't tell me," sighed Weiss.

"…Hardcase, dammit. I must have left it back at the bar when I paid the tip. It's got my wallet in it, too."

"No, no, no no no!" protested Weiss. "We are _not_ walking all the way back there! Do you have any idea how many times I'm going to have to wash this dress to get that smoke out?"

"I can go by myself," Yang replied. "As long as you take Ruby back to campus."

"We can do that," agreed Blake.

"And clean her face up."

"Yes, we can do that," Weiss said, rolling her eyes.

"Or, you know, I could," suggested Ruby.

"Use a disinfectant first!" called Yang, already running back.

"Don't take too long, sis!" Ruby shouted after her sister, as Yang disappeared into the dark beyond the streetlights.

Yang arrived back at the bar and was nearly bowled over by the smell of the hanging smoke. She hadn't noticed it before, but it was truly repugnant. She resisted the urge to pinch her nose shut, but she did wave her hand above her head as she asked "Has anyone seen a Hunter's hardcase? It's got a little heart emblem on it."

An arm extended from a shrouded corner booth, the hardcase perched between its fingers. Yang hurried towards the booth and grabbed the case, giving the hand's owner a quick "Thanks," before turning to leave. The hardcase did not leave with her- it remained held in place by the booth-sitter's hand.

"Sit down," a voice instructed.

Yang knew better than to trust the people that sat in the corners of bars, but she wanted her hardcase back and she knew she had a few rounds left in Ember Celica if she needed to make a statement. She let go of the hardcase and swung into the vacant side of the booth.

The arm that had previously been extended now folded inward, placing the hardcase on the center of the table, next to an ashtray full of crumpled cigarette butts. Sharp yellow eyes cut through the smoke haze, and just below them, a pair of lips parted to expose stained-yellow daggers.

"It's been a while, Yang," said the suddenly-more-familiar voice. Yang's mouth began to droop open. The smoke, her missing case, it was all beginning to connect. "You've sure gotten big."

The increase to Yang's own dimensions could not possibly compare to the giant on the other side of the table, who towered over her even while seated.

_How long has it been? Seven years?_

"Y-you, too," Yang stammered.

"Heh. That's an understatement," chuckled the giant, reaching into the pocket of her shirt to draw a cigarette and a lighter. The huge hand crossed to Yang's side of the table, offering the smokeable to her.

"No, thank you," said Yang, raising her hands in protest. "But maybe I can get you a drink? Strawberry Sunrise?"

"In a dump like this, you'd be lucky if they had a whiskey sour." The giant laughed some more, and Yang nervously joined in.

"You're still pretty funny, Silene."

"And you're still rocking those Huntress duds," said Silene, pulling the cigarette back to her side. She slipped it into her own mouth, its white like a scar on her pale-green skin. A flick of the lighter and a drag on the cig later, and the Faunus released a perfectly-circular smoke ring towards the hanging incandescent light, before channeling the rest of the smoke out through her nostrils.

"It's not just a costume, anymore. I'm the real deal. Just got finished with my first mission, too."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. My team and I were the first to find out about the Grimm-splosion. We'd been hunting some clues down, but things got serious, so we jumped in and saved the day. Did a pretty good job, too," she bragged.

"Well, I suppose I have you to thank for being able to walk down the street unscathed."

"Like a Grimm could do anything to you. I think they'd catch one look and run away."

"If only people were that smart," Silene sighed.

"So, what brings you to town? Are you still working on becoming a Huntress? Or are you here for the Vytal Festival?"

Silene had worked her cigarette into nearly nothing, and let it drop from her mouth into a waiting palm. Her fingers curled inward, crushing the still-smoldering tube under her claws with the faintest of hisses.

"I'm here on business, actually."

"Really? I never imagined you going into… anything, really."

"The job's pretty laid-back," explained the dragon, running a hand through her rusty red hair.

"What do you do?"

Silene drew another cigarette, lit it, and burned through half of it in a single breath.

"I hurt folks," she explained, smoke escaping with the words.

Yang would have gulped, but didn't want to risk swallowing any of the toxic fumes. "Like, _bad_ folks?"

"Folks my _employer_ doesn't like."

"Oh," murmured Yang. " _Oh._ "

Silene leaned forward across the table, the remaining half of the cigarette dangerously close to Yang's face.

"You killed all of those Grimm, saved the city. You did a good job," she hissed.

"I don't like where this is going," whimpered Yang, whose attempts to retreat were halted by the back of the booth.

"But my _employer_ didn't appreciate it. You understand what I'm saying, don't you, Yang?"

The tobacco-stained fangs were mere inches from Yang's nose. The Huntress nodded.

"Good," smiled Silene, leaning back into her side of the booth. "Now, my _employer_ wasn't real specific when it came to how to deal with you. You could make this real easy and convince your friends to drop outta school, change your names, take a long vacation… nobody has to get hurt."

Yang reluctantly took a deep breath, drawing in the foul fumes along with the much-needed air. Someone- probably Torchwick- had put a price on her head. On her _team's_ heads. On _Ruby's_ head. And _Silene_ , of all people, was here to collect. Her guts began to churn, sickened by the cocktail of anxiety, fear, and poisonous smoke. Everything they had worked for, everything they had discovered this semester- it all would end here. It was all for nothing. There would be no more answers. They would never know what Torchwick was planning, or who the woman on the train was. Was this really how the story would end?

_It can't be. I don't want it to be._

Silene crushed yet another spent cigarette in her palm. "What's it gonna be, Yang?"

"We'll give up… over my dead body!" Yang accentuate her defiance by bringing a clenched fist down onto the table. Silene blinked slowly, and dumped the remains of her smashed cigarette into the still-wobbling ashtray.

"If that's how you want it."

The Huntress rose from her seat, grabbed her hardcase, and slipped out of the booth, attempting to appear calm as she walked towards the door. Before she arrived there, a thought occurred to her. She returned to stand at the edge of the booth. Silene glared out at her sideways as she lit another cigarette.

"I'm not scared of you, Silene."

A smile returned to the Faunus' face.

"You're as dumb as ever, Yang."

Yang furrowed her brow and marched back towards the door, but the second she was out of sight, she gave up the façade and set off at full-tilt, aiming herself down the shortest path towards Beacon's campus. She ran faster than she ever had before, cutting corners, leaping over rubble, ignoring the burning in her lungs and legs. She knew Silene wasn't chasing her, but she might as well have been. Yang rocketed up the stairwell, screeched down the hall, and planned on busting through the door with her shoulder- but the door was open, which caused her to tumble onto the floor instead.

"Yang!" yelped Ruby, who hopped out of her bed and onto the floor next to her fallen sister. A drowsy-looking Weiss turned on a light, and Blake peered over the edge of her bedframe cautiously. Yang took several deep breaths before she could even begin to form her words.

"We… might… be… in… trouble," she gasped.

"What is it?" asked Weiss, some disdain in her voice.

"Torchwick… is sending… an enforcer… after us."

Blake narrowed her eyes. "You had better be kidding."

"I'm not," groaned Yang, inhaling sharply. "Ruby, you remember that old Signal friend of mine I told you about?"

"Do you mean the _bad influence_ one?"

"Yeah… Apparently she works for Torchwick."

"I _cannot_ deal with this right now!" wailed Weiss, burying her head in a pillow.

Ruby rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Well, we don't have to… we're probably safe as long as we're on school grounds. Right, Yang?"

"Yeah… I think so," mumbled Yang. "She doesn't want to get her hands dirtier than she has to. Breaking into the school wouldn't work for her."

Blake slinked out from under her covers, crossed to the windows, and closed the blinds. "So, we're under siege."

Without warning, Ruby leapt into the air, beaming like a lunatic. "GUYS! We're UNDER SIEGE! Do you know what this means?!"

"Um… that we're going to _die_?" replied Weiss.

"We get to do _siege stuff!_ We can cook a bunch of popcorn and watch _The Defense of Mistral!_ We can finally play _Remnant: The Game_ with all of the expansions at once! And, best of all, we can have a-"

"Don't do it," growled Blake.

"- _SIEGE-_ over! We'll paint each others' nails and dare each other to guess how long it'll take before we starve! Or we can tell spooky stories!"

" _Or_ we could figure a way out of this mess," suggested Weiss.

Blake nodded in agreement. "Knowing our enemy would be a good way to start." Two icy glares were directed at Yang.

"You… want me to explain how I know her, don't you?"

"Yes," said Blake and Weiss simultaneously.

"I'll have to start at the beginning…"


	2. The Early Bird and the Wyrm

Ten years old, and Yang already felt alone. Sure, she had friends, but they were the kind of friends who showed up at your birthday party for the cake and _maybe_ pin-the-tail-on-the-Nevermore. They didn't want to hang out. Ruby was eight, and a little sister bobbing along in one's wake was social suicide for the suave tween. Qrow was around to take care of her when Yang wasn't in the mood. Her dad wasn't the man he had used to be, but he was getting better; his coping mechanism was to bury himself in his work. She would wait patiently under the desk in the lecture hall, but he would grade for hours and hours into the night before he decided to go home.

She would be old enough to start at Signal after her next birthday. She envisioned it now: a new student, but an expert on the school and its policies. She had listened in on enough classes to ace them with ease, she knew every building on campus inside and out, and she had already begun planning her weapon. She was going to be a Cool Kid. She had to be. She couldn't stand it any longer. She channeled her frustration into a swinging kick, which launched the stone she had placed on the ground into the air. Its arc carried it toward the corner of the Dust Science building, which it bounded off of, causing it to sail directly into a waiting trash can. It was certainly a victory, but there was no one there to celebrate. It was a misty Saturday morning, the campus gray and drained of life. Occasionally one of the faculty would pass in or out of a building, walking with the ire of someone who was frustrated to give up their weekend. People-spotting was a better use of her time than kicking rocks, Yang concluded. People-spotting was educational.

She darted up to the Dust Science building and pressed herself against its wall, like the hero would do in spy movies. She began her slow spy-shimmy along the hard concrete, moving on tiptoes for extra stealth. She nearly tripped over herself, after which she decided that the extra stealth was not necessary. The Dust Science building was at the edge of campus, and peeking around its corner afforded her an excellent view of the many pathways that conveyed the school's traffic. One of the history professors tripped over an uneven gap in a sidewalk and dropped his briefcase, causing research papers to tumble into the wind. A Workshop instructor passed by, refusing to help. This was what her dad called Office Politics- the History department had done something that the Workshop didn't like, and now everyone was angry at each other.

"Even grownups don't get along," he had said.

Yang already knew that grownups didn't always get along. She had heard her dad and Qrow yell at each other over something she didn't understand, but that involved the names of her mother, and her _other_ mother, the one who had been gone longer. Thinking about the other mom made her feel a little sick inside, the kind of sick she felt the time she saw a baby bird with a broken leg flopping uselessly on the ground. It was too late to help. She sunk down along the wall until she sat with her head on her knees. She had messed up- she wasn't supposed to think about that. She needed a hug from her dad, but he was busy.

She mulled over possibilities, including going to the cafeteria and getting some cookies, but was distracted by the loud jets of a Bullhead sweeping low through the sky above. It was just the kind of distraction she needed. She was going to follow it as far as she could. She broke out from her cover at full tilt, only glancing away from the aircraft to make sure she wouldn't run into anything. It was slowing down and descending, and it dawned on her that it was going to make a landing on-campus. She wondered what was happening- was there an emergency? Was someone hurt, and needed to be rushed away for treatment? Or was the plane out of fuel? Was it going to crash? In her head, that sounded cool, but she reminded herself that people didn't always survive crashes. The Bullhead swung toward the administrative building and began to crawl to a stop, its engines turning to point upwards. They whined and growled, and slowly the plane touched down on the lawn. Yang ducked behind an information kiosk, knowing that she probably wasn't supposed to be around something this important. The plane's engines got louder, and soon its huge fuselage darkened the sky overhead again. Yang curled up as small as she could, as if the Bullhead's pilots were conspiring to find her. They didn't care- the aircraft flew away, leaving only a ringing in her ears as proof it had been there. Through that ringing, she heard voices.

"A pleasure to have you, Miss Zelenova," said an old voice Yang recognized as the academy's headmaster.

"Your family made an excellent choice," another voice lauded, this one belonging to the head of the school board.

"If you've got all of your things, I'll show you around," added the voice of Yang's father. She immediately hopped to her feet, and peered around the kiosk carefully. Her dad and the bigwigs were all standing around someone else, but Yang couldn't see them clearly. The higher-ups left, heading back towards the administrative building, and her dad began to turn around. She ducked back behind the kiosk, still feeling as though she was doing something she shouldn't. It was a different sort of funny feeling, not like the dying bird, but more like the time she tried to give Zwei a chocolate bar, and her dad told her that Zwei would get very sick if he ate it.

"So you're a janitor here, or what?"

That voice was new, and getting closer. It sounded like a girl, but lower and raspier, like when Ruby pretended she was the bad guy from her favorite cartoon. Yang tentatively scooted around the kiosk, making sure she would be hidden as they walked past.

"No," laughed her dad. "I'm an instructor for the Combat department. I used to be a Huntsman."

"You didn't look it," said the new voice. "What kinda stuff do you teach?"

"Well, the Combat department focuses on the training students need to become Huntsmen and Huntresses. I teach the Team Tactics courses."

"That's okay, I guess."

"Is it? You sound disappointed."

"I just wanna learn how to get stronger myself."

"Then you'll want to take Mr. Branwen's Anti-Grimm Technique class. He was a Huntsman too," he paused. "He's my brother-in-law."

"Heh. I knew Patch was out in the boonies, but I didn't know that everybody would be related."

Her father gave a nervous chuckle, a kind Yang usually didn't hear him make.

"Oh-ho-ho… that's a good one. But it's just us. We can start the tour whenever, but I need to check on my daughters first."

Yang decided that was as good of a cue as any. She stepped out from behind the kiosk, and saw her dad's back travelling down the sidewalk, with the stranger at his side. The stranger was taller than most of the students, but still shorter than her dad. Their head was covered in crazy red hair that stuck out at funny angles and bounced as they walked. Their clothes weren't very interesting, though.

"Hey, dad! I'm right here!"

He spun backwards, eyes wide. "Yang? How'd you get over here?"

"'Sploring," Yang explained, tucking her hands behind her back.

"You saw that Bullhead, didn't you?"

"Mmm-hmm," she nodded. The stranger's hands were in their pockets- they were still looking away. Yang noticed something green poking through the red.

He motioned for her to come closer, and she complied. "Well, it was bringing us a new student. This is Silene."

The stranger, having heard their name, turned to face her. Yang heard herself gasp- she knew it was rude, but she couldn't help being surprised. She had never seen anything like her before- pale green skin flecked with emerald scales, dark eyes lit by golden irises and slit pupils, two small, brown lumps rising out of her hair. What _was_ she?

"So this is your kid, Xiao Long? What's the matter, she's never seen a Faunus before?"

"She's seen Faunus, but maybe not one quite like you," he suggested, before adding "She can be a little shy sometimes."

"Is that so?" grinned Silene, bending down to Yang's eye level. She quizzically lifted her scaly brows, squinting and twisting her head, as if Yang were the oddity. Without warning, she jolted forward.

"BOO!"

Yang resisted the urge to scream. She instead tightened her fists, looked the stranger in the eye, and stated, "I'm not scared."

"Look at this little dummy," laughed the Faunus, rising back to her full height. She plopped a heavier-than-expected hand down onto Yang's head and ruffled her hair, like she was a pet. "You've got spirit. You're pretty cool."

Suddenly, Yang didn't mind the scare or the hand on her head. It had happened, and much sooner than she had expected. This complete stranger thought she was a Cool Kid.

"Well, Yang, I guess I can ask you how Ruby's doing. I need to show Silene around, and-"

Yang hopped into the air in excitement. "No, you don't!"

"I… don't?"

"I have no idea how Ruby's doing," she replied. "You should probably go check on her yourself. But I can show Silene around!"

"Oh," he said, nodding softly as he contemplated the idea. "That could work. It'd be a great way to start Silene off on the right foot, and she'll get a head-start in making friends."

"Yes!" shouted Yang, throwing a triumphant fist into the air. "C'mon! Follow me!"

"See ya, Mr. Xiao Long," grunted the Faunus as Yang raced out ahead, her pigtails dancing in the breeze.

Yang's dad called out after her. "Yang, I'll need to catch up with Silene before dinner! I have to take her to her room!"

"Okay!" chirped the little girl, waving her new friend along. Silene put a little more spring into her step, but made it clear she wasn't going to move any faster than walking. Yang slowed down and returned to her side. She knew she had to act mature- she wouldn't want Silene to think she was still a little kid. Little Kids were not Cool Kids.

"So," Yang began, cautious to make sure her words were extra cool. "We should go to the Workshop. It's very special here at Signal."

Silene gave her an approving grunt. "Lead the way."

Yang traced her way along the sidewalks, resisting the temptation to swerve between the planted shrubberies like she normally would. Instead, she kept her pace calm and her manner refined, with great effort. Grown-ups liked to talk to each other when they walked. Yang decided to give it a shot.

"You're new here," Yang said.

"Yep," huffed Silene.

_Dangit! That came out so stupid!_ _Come on, what would Dad say?_

"Where… were you before?"

"Well, my family lives in Atlas now, but that's not where they're from. They like it there, but I don't. Everybody's crummy."

"Really? Atlas looks so nice on TV."

"Depends on how you define _nice_ ," Silene countered. "Sure, the buildings are all shiny and new, but the people are mean. Some of them don't like Faunus."

"My dad said that people did some bad things to the Faunus a long time ago… was it them?"

"Yeah."

They were quiet for a while as they progressed down the pathway. Yang had to think of something to keep the conversation going, but also subtly move the friendship forward.

"I bet you'll be really lonely without your family here."

"Nah," Silene shrugged. "It's good to get away from them. They're a pain."

Yang was beginning to understand what her dad meant when he told her that she was _making things difficult._

"I guess… that's good, then."

The Workshop building was low and long and narrow- it was mostly underground. It was a library of mechanisms and forges connected to a sizable test range. The Dust was kept in the Dust Science building to avoid any accidents, but they still occurred on occasion. Yang led Silene to a nondescript door on the building's far side.

"Here it is- the Workshop. All students at Signal have to build their own weapons, so there's all sorts of cool stuff in there. I'm not a student yet, and I'm already building something, but that's a secret so please don't tell anybody."

Silene raised her hands defensively. "Don't worry, I won't tell. But what are you making?"

"I'll show you," smiled Yang, rushing to the door. She was unable to contain her excitement. This would blow Silene away, and then she'd be a Super Cool Kid. She wrapped her small hands around the handle and pulled- the door refused to move.

"Oh, it's a Saturday," she realized. "It's locked because there aren't classes." She bit her lip. Everything was ruined now. How would Silene be able to see her Super Cool weapon?

"Can't your dad open it?"

"Well, yeah. But he's back at home with Ruby."

"Damn," cussed Silene, hacking up a wad of saliva to spit at the ground. Yang knew that was a dirty word, and spitting was rude, but something about the way Silene did it made her seem confident. Surely she knew she wasn't supposed to do those things, but she did them anyway. And she really did look angry- which meant that she had wanted to see the Workshop, which meant she _did_ think it was cool. Yang smiled at the potty-mouthed Faunus, almost giggling with excitement. _Cool Kid,_ she thought. _She's a Cool Kid. I'm a Cool Kid._ She had to follow it up with something else cool.

"If it's Saturday, we're not going to be able to go anywhere… except the cafeteria."

"I am kinda hungry," mused Silene, patting her belly though her shirt.

"They've got all kinds of food there! And they give me free cookies," she added.

Silene's tongue slipped out of her mouth and over her lips. "Then what are we waiting around here for?"

Yang began to charge towards the cafeteria, but then quickly remembered the Cool Kid Rule and slowed down. She asked Silene what her favorite food was.

"Just whatever," she replied. Yang made a mental note. The emotions of cool were indifference and anger, with little room in between. "But I bet the cookies here are good."

"They're _pretty_ good, but my mom made better ones," said Yang. She realized that conversation would not end with her looking like a grownup, so she quickly changed the subject. "How old are you?"

"Twelve. What about you?"

"Ten."

"Pssh," snickered Silene. "No you aren't. You're too little."

"I am _not_ ," retorted Yang, unable to hide her frustration. "You're just really big!"

"Guess I am," Silene chuckled. "That's what's nice about being big. Everybody else seems smaller."

Yang nodded along, though she had no idea what the older girl meant. The cafeteria, which doubled as a commons, was just ahead. It was an old building with tall windows and spindly legs her dad told her were called "buttresses", which made her laugh. She couldn't help but smile when looking at them. They didn't look like butts _or_ mattresses. Yang pushed on through the doors, knowing that they had to be open, but still feeling a little nervous. It was an off-hour for food, and the only students seated at the tables were studying. Yang didn't blame them for not studying in the library. The library didn't have snacks. No one was in line, so she led Silene up to the front of the counter.

"Heya, Miss Muffin!"

The lunch lady's name was not actually Miss Muffin, but an early misunderstanding of Yang's had led to a permanent nickname. The friendly face the trundled out of the kitchen on the other side of the counter did bear some resemblance to a muffin, however. She set up her arms like a bipod and gave Yang a goofy grin.

"Hey, sugar! Does Ruby need another batch of cookies?"

Yang shook her head. "No, but my friend Silene does. She's brand new here!"

"Well, I'll see what I've got left back here for you two."

Miss Muffin held up a finger and went back into the kitchen, shuffling through trays and boxes.

"Thank you!" called Yang preemptively. She looked over her shoulder to find Silene, but the Faunus had disappeared. She surveyed the large room and found her friend examining the Wall of Old Stuff, which was there to impress visitors. Yang guessed it was doing its job. Miss Muffin returned with a plate of cookies, and after thanking her a second time, the girl went to join Silene. She was parked in front of several framed newspaper front pages. One headline read TENSIONS REACH BREAKING POINT. Another said DEMONSTRATIONS IN VALE TURN VIOLENT. The third declared FRR GAINS TRACTION. They were printed on paper, which meant they were definitely Old Stuff.

"Do you know what they mean?" Yang asked.

"When somebody's strong, they can do whatever they want to weaker people. These are from when humans were stronger than Faunus. A big company with a lot of money made the Faunus work in shitty mines."

Another dirty word. Silene must have been furious.

"But then the Faunus got together and were stronger than the company, and they had to do what the Faunus said."

Yang wanted to make sure she was following the story correctly. "So the good guys won, right?"

"Yeah, but _look,_ " Silene whispered, pointing above the newspapers. A hologram display showed the flickering image of a huge, musclebound man with sharp teeth and curved horns holding a gun toward a worried-looking woman. The man was wearing a white mask, the woman was wearing tight-looking ropes. Bold text above and below the image read "Only YOU Can Stop This SAVAGE BEAST! Report ANY and ALL WHITE FANG ACTIVITY!" Across the image's bottom, in a smaller, subtler font, were the words "Schnee Dust Company."

"They want things to go back to the way they were," snarled Silene. "But that's not how this world works. The strong people make the rules, not the weak ones. Survival of the fittest."

"And the early bird gets the worm," Yang added. Silene looked down towards her with narrowed eyes and a frown.

"Yeah," she hissed. "Exactly."

She then slammed a fist down onto the nearest table, threw her head back, and released an earth-shaking laugh. She bellowed like the Workshop's forge, shaking with all of the same intensity. She toppled backwards onto the floor and kicked her legs as if she was trying to run away from the joke. Yang had been serious- she thought that made as much sense as what Silene was saying. But soon the hilarity of her unintentional joke dawned on her, and she was laughing, too. They laughed until there wasn't any air left in their lungs, and they were both holding their sides in ecstatic agony.

"You… Yang… You're pretty damn funny. We'll have to hang out," gasped Silene.

"Y-yeah," Yang nodded, wincing. "We will."

After they had fully recovered, they ate their cookies. They tasted better than Yang thought they had before.


	3. Prototyping

Ruby peered up from below the table, her eyes just barely cresting the surface of her plate. After nearly a minute of close scrutiny, she selected a single sausage link and inserted her fork's tines into one end, perpendicular with the meat. She then slowly swung the fork in dramatic arcs, softly making whooshing sounds as it passed over her plate. Yang looked at her father for an answer, but the man only gave her a shrug in return.

"So," she began. "Whatcha doin' there, Ruby?"

"Pro-do… Pro-fo- tie… pro-something."

"Prototyping?" her father suggested.

"Yeah! That's the word," smiled Ruby, holding her fork and sausage up towards the dining room's overhead light. She squinted until the shadow of her creation fell onto her face. "When you make something to see if something else works."

Yang took a bite of her toast. "So, what are you making?"

"My weapon," she beamed. "A scythe! Like Uncle Qrow's!"

Their father shook his head and leaned forward in his chair, assuming full Dad Mode. "Aren't there plenty of other weapons out there? Less-dangerous ones?"

Ruby identified this as a disguised _no_ and prepared her counterargument.

"Uncle Qrow never gets hurt, though! He just does this spin thing-"

"Your Uncle Qrow is a professional. To start out with a weapon like that- I mean, have you even thought about it?"

Yang's younger sister set her fork down. "What do you mean?"

"It's unsafe! Look," he said, assembling his own scythe proxy out of fork and sausage. "The blade's up here, right?"

He pointed at the breakfast link, and Ruby nodded in agreement.

"And the sharp edge is down here, right?" He continued, indicating the sausage's lower half.

"Uh-huh," murmured Ruby, concerned as to where her father was going with the argument, and how worried he seemed to be about the sausage.

"And the guns, they shoot out-"

"The top," Ruby explained.

Her father raised a finger, indicating that he was about to make an important point.

"When you shoot a gun, the bullet pushes back on you. It's called recoil," he explained. "When you attach a big blade to that… with every shot, you risk it slicing yourself in half!"

"But I could find a way to use-"

He lurched further forward in his seat, his eyes desperate. "YOU ARE NOT GOING TO HAVE A SCYTHE, AND THAT'S FINAL!"

Yang saw Ruby's eyes widen in fear, and it took her a moment to realize that she was afraid, too. Her dad never, ever yelled at them. He must have noticed, because he quickly retreated back into his seat, his hand clasped against his face.

"Oh- no, I- I didn't mean to-"

A sniffle crawled out of Ruby's nose, and her father quickly raced around the table to embrace her. She was wrapped in his hug only moments before the sniffle evolved into full-scale bawling.

"No, I'm- I'm so sorry, Ruby, I shouldn't have- oh, please, forgive me. I just-" he began to sniffle. "I don't want to see you get hurt… I don't want to lose you, too."

The two of them cried and cried, heaving and gulping their sobs down. Yang didn't want to hang around them any longer than she had to- it would remind her of how much she wanted to join them in crying. She quickly scurried around behind them and gave them a hug, nestling a face in between their shoulders.

"Hey… I think I'm going to go hang out with Silene," she said, a soft suggestion. Her father nodded in agreement and gave her a pained smile.

"Y-yeah. You can go."

Yang headed to the door and removed her jacket from the coat rack, getting it half-tangled over her head. She had finally worked the kinks out when her dad called out to her once more.

"Hey, Yang?"

"Yeah, Dad?"

"I love you."

"I love you, too."

It was habit for anyone leaving the house, but this time, Yang took a moment to consider it. After all, her dad said the same thing to the other women in his life, and now they were gone. Was it some sort of curse? Or were those words- "I love you"- not the security blanket she had always imagined them to be? While the latter of the two seemed more likely, it was the scariest.

The campus was a lot busier during the week, as students shuffled between their classes at regular intervals. They would congregate around benches and under trees, busily chatting about homework, tests, their crushes, and the upcoming junior league tournament. As a general rule, Yang interacted more with the teachers than the students. She couldn't talk to the students as an equal, but the teachers all knew her as _Mr. Xiao Long's_ _kid_ , which at least gave her some sort of status. Yang weighed these things carefully- as alone as she was, the mild tolerance expressed by the teachers was far superior to being mocked by kids only a few years older than her. Silene was a welcome break from those constraints.

Yang spotted the Faunus leaving the History building, toting the school's regulation armored messenger bag under her right shoulder. Yang waved, making sure to not actually _wave_ her hand, but merely raise it in a casual manner. Silene spotted it and returned the gesture, leaving the footpath to join her friend.

"Well, if it isn't Yang," she grinned, exposing her sharper-than-human teeth. "What's up?"

"Nothing. Wanna hang out- I mean, if you can?"

Silene looked down into her messenger bag, as if searching for something.

"I _did_ have a class next hour… but I think I can make some time to hang, instead. Hangin' with Yang."

"Oh, that's awesome!" giggled Yang. "What should we do?"

"Maybe you could show me that weapon you're working on," suggested the older girl.

Yang's face lit up in excitement, but was quickly extinguished by reality. "I would, but there's classes in there now. It's a secret."

A scaly eyebrow was raised. "If you can't work on it when there _aren't_ classes, and you can't work on it when there _are_ classes, then when the hell _do_ you work on it?"

"Holidays," answered Yang. "No classes, and only a couple of teachers in their offices."

"I get it now. Sneaky."

"A little, yeah. But I need to be really careful. My dad probably wouldn't want me building it."

"Why wouldn't he? He was a Huntsman, he goes on and on about it in class. You'd think he'd be proud."

Yang bit her lip as she tried to find the best way to explain.

"It's… um, it's kinda personal. He's lost a lot of people that he loved, and he doesn't want to risk anybody else."

"He thinks your life is at risk building a weapon?"

"Without a teacher helping me out, yeah."

"But he's a teacher."

The younger girl's eyes widened. "Whoa. You're right."

"Heh. Doesn't take a genius to figure that out, dummy," chuckled Silene as she patted Yang's head. "Are you sure there's no way we could sneak a peek at that weapon of yours today?"

"But the classes-"

"Aw, come on. You said you work on it when there are still teachers around. So what if there's a couple more? Don't cha think we can pull it off if we're extra sneaky?"

"I mean, _maybe_."

"Then we've got a shot."

Yang weighed the consequences. On one hand, getting caught meant that her dad would probably find out, which in turn meant that some of his scary yelling was going to be directed at _her_ , and that the hard work she had put into the project was pretty much guaranteed to be lost. On the other hand, Silene really wanted to see it, and Yang didn't want to let her new friend down. And she couldn't resist showing off her pet project, either.

"Oh, all right. But you'll have to be sneaky."

"I can be straight-up invisible," smiled the Faunus.

"I somehow doubt that," muttered Yang.

Despite Yang's doubts about Silene's invisibility, the two headed for the Workshop. This time, the door opened, allowing them into the well-lit bare concrete hallways. Each room was marked both along the walls and on the floor by large, stenciled-in alphanumerics. Using paint instead of a digital marquee was old-school, like most of the building's construction. The Workshop was not the oldest building on campus, but it was built as if it was meant to repel the ancient raiders of yore. Yang pointed to the left, and Silene followed her to a stairwell, which they descended for three whole flights.

"I didn't even know the building went down this far," murmured the older girl.

"Since you're just starting, you stay on the upper floors," Yang explained. "But as you get older and your classes have you build more dangerous stuff, the shops are deeper down. It's safer that way."

"Oh, I get it."

The bottom floor was identical to the two they had passed. There were four doors along the central corridor, each leading to a separate sub-workshop, where classes and labs were held to teach Signal's students to craft their own Grimm-slaying machines. Three of the doors were closed, echoing with the muffled sounds of power tools and gunfire- classes were in session. The fourth door was open.

"Right there! Come on!" whispered Yang, darting down the hall. Silene trudged after her, hands in her pockets.

"You know, Yang, I don't think anyone is watching," said the Faunus as she entered the empty classroom.

"Yeah, but… what if they were?" asked the younger girl, heading for an unmarked project locker at the back of the room. "I mean, we're not supposed to be here."

"Says who?"

Yang stopped fiddling with the locker combination.

"What?"

"Who says we're not supposed to be here?"

"T-the school. My dad," replied Yang, thinking that the answers were obvious. Silene didn't seem to agree.

"Pssh, come on. What do they get out of you not being here?"

"They just want us to be safe."

"But you know what you're doing. You're not unsafe at all."

"That's true, I guess," mused Yang, returning to the lock.

"The people in charge keep the little guy down, and tell them it's for their own good. It's how it is everywhere. Like my dumb parents," Silene spat. Yang hadn't ever heard someone be so angry at their own parents. Her dad may have had his issues, but at the end of the day, she loved him a lot.

"What happened to them?"

"They owned a big company, and were a really big deal. But the Schnee Dust Company bought them out. They offered them a bunch of money and they took it like idiots."

"But wouldn't that make them rich?" asked Yang, unsure of how getting a lot of money could be a bad thing, considering how much her father complained about _the bills_.

"Yeah, but now those Schnee assholes are making even _more_ money, and they're doing it using my parents' hard work. And those dummies _let_ them take it all away."

"I don't think I understand."

"The whole world, Yang… it's a big, mixed up place, and it's full of monsters. Not just ones with big claws, but monsters that look like you and me. There's only one way to get ahead out there- no mercy. The people who start out on the bottom are gonna climb up, and they're going to kick the lazy weaklings off of their asses."

Yang slowly opened up the locker and removed a corrugated box, which jangled as she set it down on a workbench.

"But who are the people on the bottom?"

"You and me, Yang. A whole generation of kids like us, stuck in the mess our parents made."

Yang opened the tabs of the box and checked its contents. "I never thought of it like that."

"You'd better start thinking about it, because sooner or later, you'll have to deal with it."

The last thing Yang wanted to do was think about it, but she knew she was already dealing with it, and what had happened that morning made it all the more obvious. Maybe Silene was right- that the world was destined to fall apart, just like the moon had, and that it was going to be up to kids their age to fix it. The Grimm, the kingdoms… soon it would be their responsibility.

"You're right," said Yang, turning the box around and pushing it towards Silene. "But I'll be prepared."

The Faunus squinted down into the box. Yang could hardly contain her excitement. Finally, she had someone to show her hard work off to.

"Oh, it's a… um… what is it?"

"It is a little confusing. I call it Spark Celica."

Silene picked up the weapon, turning it over in her hands.

"There's a receiver, and a barrel," noted Silene. "But what's up with your grip?"

"It's a tonfa," Yang explained, gently prying the weapon away from her friend, slipping her hand into position along the length of the weapon. "You hold it like this. When someone tries to hit you, you hold it up and block." She demonstrated, raising her arm. "Then, you pull the trigger, and the kickback knocks them away."

"So what's your strategy going to be? What happens when a Grimm rushes you down?"

"I block 'em."

"And after that?"

"I… block them."

"And after that?"

"I… I see."

"It's not a bad idea, Yang," Silene reassured her with another pat on the head. "But passive resistance doesn't always work. Some folks don't learn their lesson until you plant a fist in their jaw."

"But that means I'd have to start over," sniffled Yang.

"Naw, you've got a good start. I bet you can turn these parts into a damn masterpiece, if you put your mind to it."

"Would you help me?"

"I'll do one better," grinned the Faunus, flashing her fangs as she hefted her messenger bag onto the table, and stuffed the weapon inside.

"W-What are you doing?!" Yang cried, scrambling for the bag, which Silene effortlessly lifted out of reach.

"If you can only come down here during the holidays, you'll never get any work done. And I need to start working on a weapon for my classes. If I borrow it, you can work on it whenever you like, _and_ I get to cruise by on my assignment, see?"

"Oh, wow! That's great!"

"Yeah. You and me, we'll be like a team."

A buzzer rang in the hallway, and the two wordlessly decided that their first mission was a hasty escape.


	4. Business or Pleasure?

There was a buzz in the air, a general unrest that was becoming more palpable with every passing day. Humanity did not know what to make of the Grimm attack that had crippled Vale, but they knew that it scared them. Silene wasn't scared in the slightest. This was what all of the higher-ups were talking about at the rallies and meetings. She had paid enough attention to know that this was what the White Fang wanted, the fear and anticipation before the gnashing of teeth and slashing of claws. In fact, when she thought about it, they might have used that exact wording in the speeches. Whatever the case was, the uncertainty made Silene happy. If the people were scared, the head honchos were excited, and when they were excited, her pockets got a lot fuller. When humans were losing, they were winning. The reverse of how it had been for so long. It would only take a few more pushes to topple the whole thing over, and Silene was ready to do her part.

The school had already sectioned off a plot of land to be used for festival vendors, who were beginning to stake out their own territory within it. Decoration committees were on standby with crates of streamers, and tourists were beginning to arrive ahead of the competing schools. They were content to ignore that nagging feeling. Silene gave them a wide enough berth to avoid suspicion, as she closed in on the center of Beacon's campus. The sun glistened off the tall glass and created shadow dances below the ornate arches. This wasn't a half-rate kindergarten like Signal. This was the Real Deal, a school that produced the kind of Huntsmen and Huntresses you read about in headlines. Not like Atlas, who would prefer to keep all of their graduates' operations off-the-books. Silene wanted one thing out her education- power- and she had gotten it. She managed to skip from school to school long enough to finish her Huntress training, and immediately bailed for the White Fang once she felt confident. It had worked out perfectly. Sure, her family had disowned her, but she didn't care about them anyway. They were short-sighted idiots, content with making a buck at their own expense. And Silene wasn't interested in running their company. She wasn't one for numbers or "innovation", and certainly not corporate diplomacy. The money wasn't really a draw either. There was no honor in getting paid for doing nothing. Silene made a lot less with the White Fang than she would have working for her family, but there was a substance to it.

She was trying her best to look like a tourist, gawking at the buildings and taking pictures with her Scroll. She was wearing her cleanest shirt, intolerably buttoned up all of the way, and her least-ratty scarf. Her looks were certain to attract attention, but again- she was from _out of town_. All of this did little to impede her real goal. All she needed to do was make sure that her quarries didn't wander too far away. As long as they were on-campus, she couldn't do anything; but they would go stir-crazy soon enough. Yang would lead the charge, probably. Their meeting last night proved how little the girl had changed. Silene found a bench that afforded her a decent view into a dining hall, and after assuring herself that it would support her weight, she eased herself into it and opened her Scroll. She swiped over to her recent contacts, found her current employer, and reviewed the messages. The lady was crazy-dedicated to her chess-themed branding, which was not the sort of thing one normally saw in the world of paid intimidation. The dossier she had sent had become Silene's new favorite book over the last few days.

First off was Xiao Long's bratty little sister. She still looked dopey in the mugshot. The rest wasn't anything Silene cared about, something to do with scythes and achievement testing, but even good books had boring bits. Or that's what people that read more books than Silene told her. The real juicy stuff came after. A Schnee. If you were simply at a rally that a Schnee denounced, you got kudos in the Fang. Personally heckling a Schnee got you promoted. Make a Schnee late to work, and you'd be set for life. But _hurting_ a Schnee? You'd be a god. A freaking Summer Maiden. Best of all, it was one of the young ones, the kind of prissy princess you'd want to punch even if they weren't supposed to be the mortal enemies of your race. Next was another interesting subject, one Blake Belladonna. She was another sort of person the White Fang didn't take kindly to- a traitor. Apparently, she had worked with Taurus before, which made her betrayal of the Faunus cause all the more revolting. Personally, Silene didn't care much for Taurus, but a Faunus fighting against the Faunus got her blood boiling.

She drew and lit a cigarette before proceeding, which she realized framed her reading in a very odd light indeed. Yang Xiao Long. To think that all those years ago, she had been her friend. Just remembering it sent a phantom pain tingling its way to the front of her skull, where it rested at the base of her broken horn. She rubbed the horn's shattered top instinctively, an action that had worn it smooth from years of the nervous tic. Now it looked like it had stopped growing naturally, which was far more insulting than the real explanation- that it had gotten broken in a fight. In retrospect, Yang's betrayal wasn't really her fault. It was just how things were bound to happen between the Faunus and mankind. If anything, Yang was a turning point in her life. After that, she knew she wasn't going to give humans any more chances. But she hated her guts, all the same.

She closed her Scroll, took another drag from her cigarette, and watched four figures materialize on the other side of the smoke. The one in front, a redhead, seemed to be a leader, at least judging by the way he stepped forward and spoke for his companions.

"Who the hell do you think you are?"

Silene lifted an eyebrow.

"That depends on who's asking."

He stuck a thumb into the middle of his ornate, gilded armor.

"Cardin Winchester, leader of team CRDL. One of the best teams here at Beacon."

"Oh, wow," grunted Silene dryly. "Well, if you want to know, I'm None-Of-Your-Business, leader of team FKOF."

Two of the boys towards the back of the group exchanged impressed glances as they covered their mouths.

"Oh, ha-ha, yeah, very funny," snarled Cardin. "I don't know if a dumb lizard like you can read, but this school's got a no-smoking policy. So why don't you get off of that bench and beat it back to Menagerie, where freaks like you belong?"

Silene let out a long, slow sigh, letting all of the smoke escape from her lungs. She then lifted herself off of the bench and rose to her full height, her shadow swallowing the boys below. She heard one gulp, and another whisper something including the words "smaller sitting down".

She cocked her head sideways as she glared down at them. "Are we gonna have a problem? I don't think you wanna have a problem, kid."

"We're already having a problem, and it's getting worse every second you're not getting out of here," Cardin spat.

"I'm not going anywhere. Unless you punks want to try and _make_ me."

"Real stubborn, huh? It's that Grimm blood you've all got," he retorted.

Silene stood still, silently drawing on her cigarette until it had burned to nearly nothing. She then opened her mouth slightly, allowing the butt to tumble to the ground, where she crushed it underneath her heel. She let the quiet hang in the air for a while longer. Then, she replied.

"You know, I was thinking about walking away. But now I'm going to have to break some legs."

Cardin smiled, clearly having been after a fight all along. Silene didn't care. She'd be just as happy to oblige him. "Let's teach her a lesson!"

Silene took a step back before they even began to move, not out of fear, but for show. Cardin charged headlong towards her, throwing all of his weight behind a single punch that landed just south of her stomach. As soon as his fist connected, a wave of shock and pain spread across his face. He recoiled, clutching his hand to his chest.

"Oh! Ow, crap!" he yelped. "You- you're wearing armor under-"

Silene pulled up the bottom half of her shirt, revealing nothing but abdominal muscles. "Heh. You wish."

Infuriated by such humiliation, Cardin charged again, this time swinging into a roundhouse kick that connected with Silene's left side, to similar effect. While the boy was still stunned by results of his idiotic persistence, Silene snapped her hand downward and clamped it over his calf, lifting him off the ground by his leg. His teammates decided to take action, showing some understanding of basic team tactics. A silver-haired boy rushed right to flank her, while a squinty-eyed blond went for another frontal attack. The scrawniest one, a punk with a mohawk, grabbed onto Cardin's dangling body in an attempt to pull him free. He underestimated Silene's strength, and found himself hefted off of the ground as well. She felt two dull thumps connect with her stomach and back as the other boys launched their futile attacks- it was time to go on the offensive. She twisted her upper body and locked a second hand onto Cardin's leg, as she swung the two boys together as an improvised bludgeon. Her single sweep knocked the blonde off his feet and sent him flying into the sneaky flanker, at which point Silene released her grip on her captives and let them skid across the ground to their teammates.

As Cardin desperately tried to claw himself out from underneath Dove's limp body, he became aware of a dull thumping pulsing through the ground towards him. He looked up, and saw the monster Faunus storming his way. This had been a bad idea.

Silene wrapped her huge hand around his neck and lifted him into the air once again, not applying enough force to deprive him of the air he might need to apologize. "Having fun?" she asked.

"No," he squeaked.

"Well, I sure am," grinned Silene, exposing her nicotine-stained teeth. She picked up the still unconscious Dove in her free hand as she turned her attention to Sky, who was beginning to stagger away. "Where do you think you're going?"

Sky let out a worried yelp as he tried to build up speed, but Silene was not as far away as he had hoped. She smacked the two boys she was carrying together, crushing Sky between them. She let them go and they crumpled into a groaning pile. Silene estimated that their Auras were nearly spent. There was only one boy left- the mohawk kid- and she had already thought of a use for him. She found him crawling away in the opposite direction, but he did not have much energy left to resist her tossing him over her shoulders and carrying him back to the pile. She gently placed him across the other gasping bodies, took a step back, and dropped elbow-first into his chest.

"Hopefully, you all will find better uses of your time," she hissed as she began to walk away. She stopped when she heard a weak hacking sound, and turned to find a wad of saliva dripping out of Cardin's mouth.

"You Faunus are all the same," he coughed. "A bunch of savage animals."

"Somehow, you keep finding new ways to piss me off," grunted Silene, plucking Cardin back out of the pile. She carried him by the back of the head, his limbs dragging along the ground as they traveled. Silene stopped in front of the bench, and lifted him once more.

"You see that bench?" she asked.

"Ah… uh-huh," he wheezed.

"You know what I'm going to do with it?"

"Y-you're gonna-"

"I'm gonna put you through it. Face first."

"N-no… d-don't-"

Silene wound Cardin back, put her foot forward for support, and was interrupted again.

"Stop!" called a forceful voice from behind. Silene let Cardin fall from her grip and into the bench, which still sounded quite painful. Silene looked back to find the owner of the voice heading her way- a tall girl, still short by Silene's standards, clad in thick leather armor. Long red hair was pulled back into a dramatic ponytail, though one look at her features told Silene she couldn't be related to the scumbag at her feet.

"I'm so sorry," she continued. "You must have just gotten here for the festival, and you run into these morons- they're terrible."

"You've got that right," huffed Silene.

"But you can't beat them up like that. That means that they win."

"Aw, don't give me that 'they-win' bullshit. Nobody wins when half their ass is a smear on the pavement."

The girl frowned. " _They win_ when they walk away believing the same things they did when they singled you out."

"You think I care what they _believe_? Oh, that's cute. Listen, and this is from one ginger to another, if we picked fights with everybody who _believed_ something different, we'd be stabbing our mothers in their sleep. The world ain't a fanciful enough place to get in fights over what people _believe_."

The girl was flustered now. "What do you mean? People have fought for their beliefs since time began! Isn't that why you had the Faunus Rights Revolution?"

"Heh! Faunus Rights Revolution! Beliefs! Heh! Kid, if somebody locked you in a room with no food for a week, do you think you'd want to get out because of your _beliefs_ , or because you were starving? Every single fight in this world, from a little scuffle like this to a whole war, they're about _things_ , about _power_. Remnant's like a box of matches, and the only ones who come out ahead are the ones who light the fires."

With that, she lit a cigarette and walked away. Pyrrha watched the irate tourist leave, until she was distracted by the moans of CRDL. After a moment of consideration, she decided not to help them. She was still convinced of her beliefs, and one of which was that they got what was coming to them.


	5. Trial and Error

With much trepidation, Ruby pulled the trigger. Her shoulders and arms surged with pain as the weapon's recoil caught her by surprise. In her panic, she let go of the grip, attempting to escape. The now-unrestrained blade jumped towards her. The sharpened edges thirsted for blood as they pounced toward their prey, but were thwarted by the intervention of a larger, more confident hand.

Qrow lifted the weapon away from his niece. "Weren't expecting that, were ya, kid?"

Ruby's adrenaline rush began to give way, the pain returning to her shoulder. "It- it hurts," she gasped.

"Don't worry about it. Looks like you avoided any permanent damage."

Clutching her sore arm, Ruby retreated into the bleachers and found a seat, putting distance between herself and the weapon. The Combat Department's main building featured several demonstration halls, hybrids of classroom, firing range, and gymnasium. It was in these rooms that Ruby spent most of her time with her father and her uncle- almost all of their classes were taught here. The worn seats and high ceilings were a comforting presence, though they did little to alleviate the ache in her arm.

"Hey, what are you doing, curling up like that? Don't tell me you've changed your mind."

"No!" yelped Ruby defensively. "It just hurts, that's all."

"I told you it would. You're too tense. You can't fight against a weapon like this, or it'll win. You've got to make it work with you."

"I know that," she grumbled. "It's just not easy."

"It'll take time, but I know you can do it. You really are your mom's kid."

Ruby didn't know what to make of her uncle's comment, but she figured since he was on the subject of family that she could field the question that she had been saving up.

"What was Raven like?"

Qrow's gentle smile disappeared.

"Kid, I don't think you-"

"I mean, did you get along?"

Her uncle sighed, and took a seat alongside her on the bleachers.

"…No. Not always."

"I don't think Yang likes me anymore."

"So that's what this is about, huh?"

"She doesn't want to watch shows or play games anymore. She's always gone. Is that what Raven did?"

"Sweetie, Raven and Yang- they're just as different as they are alike. Yang's just figuring out her place in the world. You'll do it too. As much as your dad might not want to admit it, Remnant is a big place. Nobody can stay cooped up and pretend that everybody else doesn't exist. 'Cause one day, they're going to come knocking."

Ruby sniffled, drawing the back of her hand across an eye. She told herself she was still hurting from the weapon's kickback.

"What am I supposed to do, then?"

Qrow stood up and handed his weapon back to her. "Keep practicing."

* * *

Yang swung her legs forward and backward idly, secure on her retaining wall perch. She was passing the time by watching the walkway below, on which two dead leaves danced. The dead stem of one caught on the other, and soon the wind pulled them into a spiraling flop on the grass. An expensive yet poorly-maintained sneaker crushed both under its wearer's weight.

"Hey, Yang," grinned Silene. "I guess you figured out my schedule."

"History at eight, Dust Science at ten, Workshop at two."

"Now that's some team coordination."

The younger girl heaved herself off of the retaining wall and dropped onto the walkway, which her friend was not standing on.

"You're supposed to walk on here," warned Yang gently.

"That's why I'm not," Silene replied.

"Want to work on the project?"

Silene flashed a trademark razor-smile. "What else am I gonna do?"

Together they walked to the dormitory building, which was the oldest, nastiest eyesore on Signal's grounds. Silene led Yang through the creaky doors and the odd-smelling lobby, past the faded Beacon and Atlas recruitment posters, and under the distressingly sagging piece of ceiling tile, until they were stopped by the hall supervisor's booming voice.

"ZELENOVA."

Silene halted just short of the elevator, causing Yang to crash into her from behind. The Faunus turned back to the scowling man behind the wrap-around desk.

"Yes, Mr. Damastes?"

The wrinkle-faced man's thick eyebrows formed a nearly-perfect V-shape, a great white arrow pointing towards his flared nostrils. "Where do you think you're going with a _visitor?"_

"Haven Academy, sir," explained Silene in the driest tone possible. "She's got family there. It'd be a real shame if they found out she was gone."

"I won't tolerate any backtalk in this hall," fumed Mr. Damastes, prying himself out of his office chair to attempt to loom over them- he only succeeded in looming over Yang. "Regardless of your family name!"

Silene shrugged. "You're the one who brought it up."

The man fidgeted in raw anger, raised an index finger in protest, and sat back down with an enraged snort. He pushed a clipboard across the desk towards her.

"You'll have to sign her in," he growled.

"Oh, certainly," bubbled Silene, taking the clipboard with an overtly perky flourish.

"And there's a package here for you," his anger giving way to resignation. He hauled a cardboard box covered in warning tape out from underneath the desk, and traded it for the clipboard.

Silene stuffed it under her arm. "Took 'em long enough."

"What is it?" asked Yang, searching the box for a clue.

"You'll see," replied Silene, pushing the call button for the elevator. The old machine groaned as it ground its way down to their floor, its doors stuttering open. Yang scrambled inside, and the Faunus followed, but not before turning back to the supervisor and extending her tongue towards him in spite. Mr. Damastes attempted to extricate himself from behind the desk, was caught fiddling with the door panel as the elevator departed. The struggling lift deposited them on the third floor, and together Yang and Silene traveled to the end of the hallway, to room 309. As Silene fumbled through her pocket with her one free hand to find her keycard, the door across the hall opened.

"Well, hello, Silene," said the boy whose face emerged from room 308.

Yang caught a glimpse of Silene's eyes rolling. "Gregor," she groaned. "You remember what happened the last time you tried to talk to me, right?"

"Yes, but I-"

"If you don't want it to happen again, you should shut your mouth right now."

She found her keycard and opened the door, and motioned for an uncertain Yang to head inside before ducking in herself.

Yang hopped into the extra folding chair that sat in the room's corner- her designated spot. "What's wrong with that guy? He seemed nice."

Silene set the box down on the particleboard desk before collapsing onto her bed.

"He's one of those holier-than-thou idealists. I've never seen anybody crap out as much bullshit as he does."

"Like what?"

Silene produced an annoyed sigh. "So he's in my Anti-Grimm class, and the teacher lined us up for a sparring round just to check our fundamentals, and he gives me this freaking speech about how he believes that everybody has the potential to better the world and that their lives are precious so he would never ever fight anybody with a future, so he just stood there."

"And what did you do?"

"I beat the tar out of him," Silene grinned. "Some people swear that they've got the world all figured out, and they only realize they're wrong once the world punches a couple teeth out."

Yang nodded along, following the logic. "So why are you still mad at him?"

"He didn't lose enough teeth."

Silene slung an arm under the bed and pulled out the shoebox that now housed Yang's work-in-progress weapon. Silene's room was no workshop, so they had decided by unanimous vote to only work on the mechanicals, and leave Dust out of the equation until the rest of the weapon was ready.

"How far did you get last time?" asked Silene.

"I finished separating the grips from the receiver, so I'll need to re-fit the barrels and mount it to… oh, we don't have anything to mount it on, do we?"

"We do now," said Silene, rolling out of bed and retrieving the package. Using a carefully-guided index finger, she severed the caution tape and peeled open the cardboard flaps. Silene removed a sizable clear plastic bag from within, passing it to Yang. Inside were several heavy chunks of metal, perforated with holes for bolts and screws.

"No way! These are perfect! How did you-"

"I asked my parents for them, they sent it in my care package. That just might be the one thing they're good for- free stuff."

"I- I just- thanks so much!"

"Don't get all sappy about it. Remember, I've got an interest in your weapon working out, too, since my grade is going to be riding on it."

"Oh, right! We really need to get started!"

"Not just yet. There's one last thing here…" Silene reached into the box, pretending the tiny package could swallow her whole arm. What she drew out was a small, blue-green square.

"I thought we'd make our team official," explained Silene. "So I got a scarf like yours." She flicked the square open, and it unfurled to its full length. She tied it behind her neck and stood up, twisting her body back and forth.

"How does it look?"

Yang smiled, throwing her a thumbs-up. "Awesome."

She sat down, and together they returned Yang's weapon into its constituent parts. Their objective was simple: reconfigure what they had to boost Spark Celica's offensive power. The tonfa configuration had to go, but the machinery was perfectly acceptable. Silene suggested that they opt for a more straightforward approach, using the mounting rails to align the receivers with the forearms. Within an hour, they had completed a working version of the right arm. Yang eagerly strapped the contraption on, gently shaking her arm to test the weight.

"It feels a little too light," she noted.

"Well, give it a cycle."

Yang nodded, closing her fingers around the now-sideways grip under her palm. The hammer produced a heavy, satisfying click as the slide lock disengaged. To mimic the reload, she pumped the slide back towards her with her free hand.

"Oh," she muttered.

"What is it? Did something break?"

"No, but… the problem is, there's two guns. And only one hand to reload with."

"But that's not necessarily a problem," offered Silene. "Give it here."

Yang unstrapped the weapon and handed it to the Faunus, who began to disassemble it again. Another hour passed, and soon the revised product was complete: A bracer with _two_ shotguns on a single slide. The receivers and barrels, running in parallel, were activated by the same trigger in the same grip.

"Give this a try."

Yang strapped the weapon back on, but immediately didn't like it.

"It's too heavy, this time. And I'm still using both hands to fire and reload. I can't do anything but shoot."

"But what else do you want a gun to do? Do you want to work in some kinda utility function?"

"Well, my uncle Qrow has this saying… that a good weapon does what you want it to, that it works with you."

Silene gave Yang a skeptical look. "And the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Yang plucked the device off of her arm, laying it back down. "I guess… you think about what you would do if you didn't have a weapon. How would you fight?"

"I'd punch somebody in their face, I guess."

Yang repeated the words slowly to herself, then looked down at the weapon, then at her hand, which she curled into a fist, then relaxed, and then clenched again. She raised her hand up to eye level, and threw a punch through the air, tracking her fist with her eyes.

"Uh… Yang? Are you okay?"

"Hold on, I- I think I…"

Silene watched Yang drop back to the floor, scrambling for the tools. She began to disassemble the barrels and the receivers, tearing into the weapon's delicate inner workings. Slides and springs and hammers nearly flew into the air as she rearranged every piece of the firearm.

"I'm just going to step back and let you do your thing," murmured a concerned Silene.

Yang did her thing for nearly two hours, uncharacteristically silent as she worked. All Silene could do was watch in awe as the younger girl reconfigured the weapon into an entirely new layout. She only paused once, looking up from her work with frenzied eyes, and asking, "Do we have anything heavy?"

Silene was unsure of how to respond. "Like what?"

"Not big. Just heavy!"

After thinking through all of the possibilities, Silene concluded that she had nothing to offer Yang. She was about to tell her so, but Yang had already gotten up and stormed to Silene's desk, where she retrieved a paperweight.

"Oh. Y-yeah, you can use that, I guess."

After a few more moments of furious fiddling, Yang stood up, cradling the rebuilt weapon in her arms. She again fastened the straps over her right arm and held it out towards Silene, who noticed something very odd about it.

"What did you do with the grip?"

"I took it off," said Yang.

"And the trigger?"

"I took it off."

Silene was genuinely convinced that Yang had gone crazy. "What kind of gun doesn't have a trigger?"

"The kind of gun that works with you," explained Yang, her strangely stoic face suddenly becoming a smile again. She pointed to the length of the weapon. Along the side was a track, and on top of the track sat the paperweight. "Just watch."

Yang curled her fingers into a fist. She then drew her arm back, fast, muscles coiled for a punch. The paperweight traveled back along its track, reaching the end with a solid _cha-chunk_.

"Loaded," stated Yang.

She then drove her small arm forward with all the force she could muster, propelling her fist ahead to demolish the static, musty air of the dorm room. The paperweight lurched forward this time, travelling from its midpoint to the track's beginning. It arrived, and a hammer clicked.

"Fired."

"It shoots by punching," whispered Silene. "That's insane! How does it feel now?"

Yang let her arm relax, and something like a laugh slipped out of her throat. She was beaming.

"It's just right."


	6. When it Rains...

They stood in a line, resisting the urge to fidget. This was a _serious_ kind of event, one that would shape the rest of their academic careers; or at least, that was what the instructors told them. They were not about to argue with a woman like Professor Bobbie Krasniy. Krasniy was huge and loud, and easily the angriest person in the Combat department. Even from Yang’s distant hidey-hole beneath the bleachers, Krasniy looked gigantic. She could swear she saw Silene flinch as Krasniy walked past- to be fair, she was the only teacher who could really look down on the Faunus.

“Students!” bellowed Krasniy, sending the lineup of children shivering into attention. “Today is Weapon Presentation Day! According to school policy, you have been required to design and build a weapon of your own design! This weapon will accompany you throughout your stay at Signal, and will travel with you to whatever academy you go to next- as long as you don’t screw anything up! So who is going to be first to put their grade on the line?”

The underside of the bleachers was an uncomfortable place to be, so Yang was somewhat dismayed that Silene did not volunteer to go first, or second, or third. Yang deduced that Silene intended to go last, which would be more dramatic. It wasn’t all bad, Yang supposed. She got a chance to see what other students were coming up with, and what they considered to be Cool Weapons. A pistol-hammer, some sort of pneumatic piledriver, and a pair of arm-mounted rope-dagger launchers all received a warm response. No one was impressed by the rifle-bayonet combo, whose builder insisted that it boasted superior cutting power while being fired. It took extra effort for Yang to suppress her jeering at that one. Despite the imprint of the sliding bleacher rails becoming lodged in her back, she was having a learning experience, something she hadn’t had at the school for a long time.

Sneaking into Silene’s class hadn’t been hard. Yang already could wander in and out of buildings as much as she wanted. She spent the morning meandering around campus idly, then headed for the Combat building. She stayed out of the janitor’s sight as he unlocked the rooms, and once he had left, she dove into the unoccupied demonstration hall ahead of any of the students. Leaving was going to be more difficult, but she just _had_ to see her weapon’s first run, that was worth whatever punishment she might receive for eavesdropping on a class as a non-student.

As each student finished presenting their weapon and firing a few rounds downrange at the target dummies, they retreated to the bleachers, their weight sending squeaks through the jungle of rails and supports surrounding Yang. Krasniy’s lineup shrank until only two students remained- Silene, and Gregor. Yang stealthily scooted forward, pressing her eyes to the gap in the panels.

Krasniy halted in front of Silene, marking something on a clipboard.

“Zelenova. You’re up. I assume you actually _completed_ your assignment, this time?”

“Aw, teach, you don’t trust me?” Silene replied with a coy grin. She reached down and unlatched her messenger bag, thrusting her arms inside. When she removed them, they were clad in the labyrinthine mechanicals of the completed weapon.

Krasniy remained skeptical. “And what exactly are those supposed to be?”

“Close-Quarters Shot Gauntlets, Spark Celica.” Silene held them up for the class to see, and sent a wink towards the bleachers that Yang knew was intended for her. She could hear the students above her whispering among themselves. There was a certain accusation in their voice, coupled with petty protest- they were _jealous_ , which nearly caused Yang to squeal in triumph. She had done it. She was a Cool Kid. Or at least, she _would_ be. While the teacher wasn’t looking, Silene sent a wink back towards the bleachers.

“I’ll be impressed when you demonstrate that they work,” grunted Krasniy.

Silene discretely flipped the safeties off, and threw a punch towards the ceiling. The momentum carried the weighted mechanism along its track until it reached the top, where the trigger was actuated. A hammer snapped down on a single twelve-gauge shell and blasted its payload of kinetic Dust skyward, like an overpowered firecracker. Each individual pellet erupted as a crackling burst of golden light, sparkling away into nothing, just like the weapon’s name foretold. Krasniy jotted down a few notes onto her clipboard, and Silene began to saunter back towards the bleachers.

“Not bad, Zelenova. Not bad at all. All that’s left is you, Gainsboro.”

Silene stopped in her tracks, craning her head back over a shoulder.

“Y-yes, ma’am,” he mumbled, pulling back the sleeve of his baggy grey coat. Attached to his right arm was his weapon, a gauntlet of different design. Several large panels curled back from the cuff, almost lacey in their intricacy.

“What is it with kids strapping guns to their arms these days?” muttered Krasniy. “Well, go on.”

“I patterned it after my family’s ancestral designs. I call it ‘Uroko no Ryuuhana’.”

“A mouthful doesn’t help me give you a grade, Gainsboro. What does it _do_?”

Gregor raised his gauntleted arm and pressed a button, causing the intricate cuff to unfold and collapse, sealing around his limb. The panels had rearranged themselves into an identifiable silhouette- the gaping jaws of the mythical dragon Grimm.

“Are you going to put on a puppet show with it?”

“N-no, ma’am. It’s a Dust carbine.”

“What a year for originality,” sighed Krasniy. “Are you going to shoot it or not?”

“With your permission, ma’am, I’d like to demonstrate it in a sparring match.”

Krasniy nearly laughed aloud, which as far as Yang understood, would have been quite the occasion. “Really? Are you going to actually do something for once?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’d like a rematch against Silene.”

Silene finished turning back around.

“Oh, Gregor. I thought you would have learned your lesson last time.”

Krasniy referenced her watch and her clipboard. “We’ve got time. Let’s put up the safety net.” On command, the impulse field crackled to life, surrounding the bleachers. Yang, too excited to care, let out the squeal she had been bottling up as the noisy generators activated.  Gregor took a few measured steps back into the center of the hall’s floor.

“There wasn’t a lesson to be learned. You didn’t change my mind, Silene. Not with your words or your fists. Today, I’m going to show you what I meant.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah. Sure thing. Keep telling yourself that.”

“Quit yapping, you two! You’re on the clock!” bellowed Krasniy.

“You heard her,” grinned Silene, deactivating Spark Celica’s safeties again. She slammed her adult-sized fists together, causing the gauntlets to fire into each other point-blank. Kinetic Dust activated Kinetic Dust, creating a gigantic low-temperature fireball centered on the Faunus. Beneath the countless floating embers, a dull-green Aura pulsed and flickered. The students above Yang roared in approval. Yang was surprised by how savage they sounded. Did they all hate Gregor as much as Silene did? Or was this the world preparing to knock his teeth out? Yang wasn’t sure what the answer was, but she couldn’t help feeling like something was wrong about all of it.

She couldn’t ponder it long, as Silene was already making her first move, dashing out of the yellow haze. Yang had never seen Silene fight before, but she imagined she would look something like Qrow did, flitting back and forth with casual grace. But Silene was not so much an agile bird as she was a freight train. There was no finesse in her lunge forward towards her opponent; only weight and rage. Unfortunately for Silene, freight trains were not skilled at changing direction quickly, which proved to be quite the disadvantage when Gregor sidestepped her charge, raising his leg to trip her. Her mass carried her right into the trap, but Gregor did not count on exactly how much momentum he would be working against. Instead of tripping, Silene barged through, setting _him_ off-balance. Silene capitalized on the failure of his counter by planting her trailing leg out wide, converting that momentum into a backhanded strike. Gregor must have intuited her massive movements, and raised his own weapon in defense. With a clang, the two gauntlets met for the first time, hanging together for a moment as their wielders struggled against each other. Gregor gritted his teeth and modified his footing, but Silene’s advantage in size and weight was already beginning to win out.

“Just… a little… more,” Gregor winced.

Silene lifted a scaly eyebrow. “Before I knock your lights out?”

“Ah, no,” gasped Gregor, pulling his arm away. Without anything to impede it, Silene’s fist raced towards its target- which had since moved. She staggered forward, her upper body falling just underneath his shoulder height. Yang quickly pieced together his plan- he couldn’t directly counter the momentum Silene could put into her attacks, so he was going to stop it from ever building up in the first place. He lifted his weapon arm as high as he could, and drove his elbow into her exposed back, while kicking at her weight-bearing shin again. In the span of a single attack, he had turned her strength against her. Stunned, Silene fell forward. Face met hardwood floors with a heavy smack that echoed through the hall. The students, who had only moments before been cheering for Silene, now roared with joy at her defeat.

                “If everyone in the world throws the first punch, there won’t be any faces without black eyes,” said Gregor, squatting next to the floored Silene. “I’m sorry if I offended you before by not fighting. But I don’t think anyone should get hurt if there isn’t a good reason. Today, I had a good reason. What do you think?”

                Silene sprawled her arms and legs out to her sides, propping herself up like a giant lizard. She rocked back onto her hindquarters and finally onto her feet, rising back above Gregor. Her face was unusually penitent, _defeated_ , even. She even sniffled.

“I think,” Silene mumbled, as her eyes narrowed and her lips drew back into a razor-toothed smile, “We’re not done yet.”

Her off-hand buried itself in his gut, actuating the left half of Spark Celica with a cruel bark. Punch and shotgun were finally united, their combined stopping power throwing Gregor to the other side of the hall. The boy’s Aura fizzled as he slid into the impulse field, but slowly managed to reassert itself as he miraculously picked himself up. Silene had already begun another charge, however, and Yang could see the desperation in Gregor’s eyes as he felt at the field behind him- he didn’t have the room to cancel Silene’s momentum again.

Yang watched him take a deep breath, and raise his own gauntlet. Steadying it with his free arm, he fired a single shot. Freight trains were also not much for dodging, so Silene didn’t bother evading the bullet, which found its mark in the center of her right forearm. Ice surged out from the impact point, crawling across her skin and consuming her weapon. Silene immediately attempted to disengage, but found that fighting against her momentum was as difficult for her as it was for Gregor. She managed to halt herself, but only once she was well within Gregor’s striking distance. The boy swung for a gauntlet-enhanced chop to her abdomen, but Silene cleverly put her iced-over arm in the way, causing Gregor to dislodge a hefty chunk of the Dust-cicle.

“Aw, thanks,” cooed Silene, before using Spark Celica’s left half to reinforce a hook to Gregor’s temple. The blow, while glancing, twisted his neck enough to cause his brain stem great concern; he fell immediately and with much celebration from the audience.

“Now, we’re done.”

As if on her command, the generators died down, the impulse field disintegrating. Silene drove her palm into the remaining ice surrounding Spark Celica’s right half, unsettling it enough to pry it apart with her fingers as she walked off the combat floor. Krasniy was waiting for her.

“Was that _really_ necessary, Zelenova?”

“I think it falls under the ‘disregard for peers’ column,” sneered the Faunus. “Make sure it gets on my report card, OK?”

“I’ll do no such-“ Krasniy processed Silene’s words, stomped her foot in agitation, and roared, “Class dismissed!”

The bleachers above Yang rolled with the thunder of uncountable backsides leaving and stomping away to less-interesting classes. Yang patiently watched Krasniy pack up her materials and haul a dazed Gregor out of the room before departing, until only Silene was left sitting on the far corner of the bleachers. With special care not to trip over the trusses and bracing, Yang crawled out and joined her friend.

“Oh, wow, Silene! They’re amazing!”

“No shit, you little dummy,” grinned Silene, ruffling Yang’s hair. “They really pack a… they hit really hard, it’s what I’m trying to say.”

“They work even better than I thought they would,” giggled Yang.

“I almost wish I could keep ‘em, but I won’t make you give them up,” sighed Silene. “They’re your babies, not mine.”

Yang smiled at the idea of finally owning her own creation, but was briefly disturbed by the image of Gregor’s neck twisting around wrong. The feeling  of pride fermented inside of her as Silene removed the gauntlets and placed them in Yang’s lap, curdling into guilt. She was responsible for how bad that must have felt, responsible for Gregor getting laughed at while suffering.

“Do you think Gregor is going to be all right?”

Silene shrugged nonchalantly. “If you enroll your kid in one of the Academies, they’re going to get hurt. Even more so if you come here with a stupid attitude like that.”

“But did you really have to-“

“I mean, can you _believe_ that guy? ‘If everybody throws the first punch we’ll all have black eyes’… that’s some high-octane bullshit. That’s already how it works! Not that he’d know. His family goes way back, they’re a bunch of aristocrats, or something. Shitty bourgeoisie types.”

Yang didn’t bother trying again. Once Silene got angry about something, she was difficult to talk back down. Instead, a change of subject was in order.

“I think the next class is going to be coming in here soon.”

“Then we should get moving,” grunted Silene, hefting herself out of her seat and scooping up her messenger bag.

 “Maybe we could get some victory cookies,” Yang suggested. “I hear Miss Muffin got some new recipes!”

                “Victory cookies it is,” grinned Silene.

                They marched out of the building and into a downpour, which neither one had been expecting. Silene hoisted her messenger bag above her head, but it only provided minimal cover from the heavy rain.

                “We’re gonna have to run,” shouted Yang over the roar of the raindrops. Silene nodded in affirmation, and the two took off at a sprint through the grass, bypassing the walkways in favor of a more direct route to the cafeteria. However, the softly rolling hills of Signal’s campus killed any advantage the direct route would have given them. The rain-slicked grass made even the gentlest of the inclines a nightmare to climb. Yang slipped and fell enough that her knees turned greenish-brown, and Silene’s greater mass failed to anchor her any better. After many tumbles and much cursing, they reached the final embankment before the cafeteria- the steepest grade on campus.

                “Oh, we’ll- we’ll have to turn around,” sighed Yang, defeated.

                “No way. We’ve got this,” insisted Silene. “All we need is a running start.”

                The Faunus took a few steps back, advancing part of the way up the previous hill. She then charged downwards, began ascending the incline, and jumped, landing with most of her torso cresting the hill. With some effort, she pulled the rest of her body over, and then turned around to offer an arm to Yang. She hoisted the girl up , set her beside her on the muddy ground, and shook her head.

                “You see? You can’t just let things like that stop you. You’ve got to- oh, _shit_.”

                In the cacophony of the rain and mud and grass it would not have been hard to miss it. The cold and wet had a way of dulling the senses, but when Yang saw what Silene did, everything became horrifyingly clear. Ahead of them, against the far, windowless wall of the cafeteria, a huge splotch of jet-black something hung motionless, as if it was a part of the structure. Rain poured off of its ebon fur and ran in thick streams down its bony white face. Yang had seen its kind before- a Beowulf. A Grimm.

                “Don’t. _Move_ ,” whispered Yang.

                “How the hell-“ Silene was cut off by Yang’s hand clamping over her mouth.

                Another two dark figures emerged from around the corner of the cafeteria building- thankfully, they were not Grimm. One, taller than the other, was obviously a Faunus, with a long grey-white tail emerging from the back of his trenchcoat. The shorter of the two was funny-looking in a general kind of way, and far more talkative.

                “Un-fucking-believable,” he snarled, stuffing a folder into his jacket. “Sent out here to the middle of FUCKING NOWHERE, to spy on kids like a fucking creeper! But that’s what you get when you’re the Fang’s bitch! It’s like the world is saying, hey, Mauve, FUCK YOU! Like, could things POSSIBLY be ANY WORSE?”

                His partner said nothing.

                “Oh, you’re a real fucking help, standing around like that… it’s like talking to a fucking brick wall! Is a little conversation too much to ask for? If there’s some kinda higher power out there, I wish they would fucking kill me n-“

                The Grimm was done with waiting patiently, and decided to leave its perch on the wall, dropping onto the louder of the two men. Yang felt Silene draw a sharp breath through her fingers. The beast pinned him to the ground with one paw and raised its other to strike.

                “FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK,” screamed the victim, who certainly had a way with words. His associate calmly reached into his trenchcoat and removed a gigantic revolver, snagged the Beowulf by the back of the neck, wrenched it backwards onto the ground, and fired three shots through its skull. The creature fell limp, and promptly began to dissolve into a thick, black smoke.

                “Oh, _fuck_ ,” gasped the smaller man. “Why did you- somebody heard that! They’re going to be on top of us any fucking minute! We’ve got to get out of here!”

                The two scrambled away, heading for the edge of campus. Yang felt Silene begin to pull away from her hand, but was powerless to stop her. The Faunus rose to her feet, slowly closing on the dissolving Beowulf corpse.

                “Silene, we really shouldn’t…” Yang gave up halfway through the sentence. She couldn’t stop her. The Faunus  knelt in the mud next to the Beowulf, which she poked at cautiously. The smoke pooled around her finger, and continued to drift away. She wrapped an arm underneath the beast’s leg and hauled it aside. Underneath, lying in a furrow of soggy displaced earth, was a torn jacket. Silene delicately lifted it from the ground, cradling it as if it were a baby. She picked her way through it, her eyes widening as she found the folder inside.

                “Go get your cookies, Yang,” she whispered, the severity of her voice unnatural.

                “But… what about-“

                “This?” asked  Silene, balling the jacket and tucking it under her arm. “This didn’t happen.”

                With those words, she turned around, found the nearest walkway, and ran towards the dormitory building. Yang was suddenly overcome with emotions, a combination of fear and confusion and anger she couldn’t quite describe. She sank down to the muddy ground, and stared at the gauntlets she had built while the rain plastered her pigtails to her back.


	7. It Pours

The room was dark, except for the painfully-bright bulb that dangled overhead. Her arms and legs refused to move, zip-tied to the chair beneath her. Yang tugged at the restraints, the plastic digging into her wrists and ankles. She tried to call upon her Semblance, to make herself angry, do deal back the wrong that was being done to her, but she couldn't. She couldn't possibly make herself angry- she was too afraid. Her adrenal response was complete _flight_ , drowning out any last vestiges of _fight_. Her eyes searched for an escape, but there wasn't any. Only pea-soup darkness, impenetrably thick in every direction, and the swinging bulb overhead. The only other thing in the room was the scraping. Grating, rhythmic, resonant, constant scraping, surrounding her on all sides. The sound of a blade being sharpened.

"H-help," she whimpered, tugging at the zip-ties again, no more successful than she was before. "Please, some… somebody."

"Help?" asked the last voice Yang wanted to hear. "Why do you want help? Didn't you ask for this?"

The scraping stopped, and gave way to equally-unnerving footsteps. Step by step, the darkness begat the hulking form of Silene, towering over the Huntress, forty, fifty feet tall. Her lips stretched back to bare her decaying gums and yellowed fangs, saliva dripping to the floor in buckets. Yang gagged and wretched, but there was nothing in her stomach to expel.

"Oh, don't give me that," growled Silene's slavering maw. "You're not a victim, here. I didn't tie you up. You did. You're really _dumb_ , Yang. And that's sad…"

A gigantic hand surged forward, girder-like fingers clamping down around the chair. A clawed thumbnail came to rest against Yang's throat, pressed tightly against the flesh. Yang felt her pulse reflected on the bladed nail, just inches from ending her life.

"…because I don't like to kill people who don't know what they're doing."

Yang felt the skin break, and gasped for breath.

She was buried under several folds of her quilt. Sweat tacked the sheets to her body, failing to cool her down under the weight of her covers or her nightmare. She rose up in bed, casting the linens aside. Below her, softer than she had heard it before, the rhythmic scraping persisted. Yang cautiously slipped off of her bunk, lighting on the small section of the floor that did not squeak as loudly as the rest. With the curtain drawn, the room was as pitch-black as the nightmare prison, with the exception of the sliver of moonlight that snuck through the edge of the window. That wisp of light crawled under her bunk and into another, where a pair of glowing eyes stared out at her.

"The bathroom is the other way," said Blake under her breath.

"I'm not-"

"Then what are you doing out of bed?"

"I can't sleep…" Yang desperately focused on the darkness, identifying the silhouette of Blake's weapon in her lap, the Faunus' hands working over it with what she guessed was a whetstone. "…when you're doing that."

"I suppose you'll have to deal with it," grunted Blake, continuing to sharpen Gambol Shroud's main blade.

Yang honed the edge of her whisper. "Wait, you're _mad_ at me?"

The glowing yellow slits narrowed. Blake set the sword at the foot of the bed, and stood, the floor dead silent under her feet. She glided across the room and opened the door, gesturing for Yang to enter the hall. Yang followed the orders and left the room, making an uncomfortable amount of noise. Blake slipped through the door and closed it behind them.

"I want to know why you sound surprised."

"Because this isn't my _fault?_

"Oh, I'm pretty sure it is, Yang. 'I was stupid and got mixed in with the wrong crowd, but I saw how things were going and bailed so she held it against me'? That's your line?"

"That's what I told you. It's the truth."

Blake's glimmering eyes rolled in the dark. "You and I both know this isn't a one-way street. If there wasn't something that _you_ wanted to prove, would we be here right now?"

Yang felt her stomach churn. Even her guts were calling her out. She drew a ragged breath and sunk down against the wall.

"I'm not here because I want you to feel shitty. I've dragged the team into equally rotten stuff. I'm here because I want you to think about this. Whatever it is, I hope it's worth having our lives on the line. Your sister's life on the line."

Yang gave her a feeble nod, which was enough to convince Blake to shrug and return to the dorm room to continue sharpening her weapon. But Yang was filled with anything but hope. The sight of Silene had filled her with enough poisonous anger to lash out, but now that she was a specter hovering just outside of view, rational thought was taking hold- and it was afraid. Silene wasn't just a monster, Silene was a monster that _she_ had created. Was there really any way to own up to that? Yang didn't have the answer. What she did have were two fists, and a keycard to a workout room with a very receptive punching bag.

* * *

It had rained for three days straight. It wasn't really an oddity, since Patch was prone to misty spells. But it was disheartening. Ruby was getting rides with Qrow to campus, where she _said_ she was helping him sort paperwork, but Yang knew she was working on something bigger. But after what had happened, Yang decided she was done with school. She was going to wait as long as possible before she ever set foot on Signal's grounds again. Not if things like that happened there. That meant she was stuck at home, and on a rainy day like this it was… what was that word her dad used? Depressing. Sure, there were video games and books and toys. What made those things all worthless is that she was alone. Back where she had started.

With a great deal of effort, she pulled herself out of bed. She checked the window again to make sure it hadn't stopped raining. She stumbled to the kitchen and sat down at the table. A plate of cold scrambled eggs sat at her usual place, but Yang wasn't interested, and pushed them aside. There was no one there to tell her she _needed_ to eat her breakfast anyway. Yang set her head down on her arms, and shot a sideways glance at the clock hung above the counter. 11:05. Her stomach grumbled, and she began to think that she wanted to eat breakfast after all. She put the plate of eggs in the sink, and scrounged through the cabinets until she found what she was after- a carton of store-bought cookies, bought for some special occasion in the distant future. She peeled the package open and immediately crammed a cookie into her mouth.

They were sweet, but they weren't warm, and they didn't have a smell. Thinking about what these cookies _didn't_ have reminded her of the cookies that her mom had made, which reminded her of the cookies that her other mother _might_ have made, which made her sob a half-chewed cookie out of her mouth. The feeling was dark and wet and cold, just like it was outside, and it radiated out of her heart and into her arms and legs. She cried until her shirt was wet and the saccharine cookie taste was replaced with the flavor of tears and snot. She needed a hug or to be held or whispered softly to but there was no one there for her. She curled up on the floor, in the middle of the cookie crumbs, and felt her tears fill the grain in the floor planks. She wasn't facing the clock, so she didn't know how much time was passing. To Yang, it felt like years. Then, she heard it, creeping in over her sobs. It was faint, and half-drowned by the rain. Something outside _growled_.

Her hands clamped over her mouth. She had to be silent, but now fear was bubbling up underneath the grief, and it was much louder than her quiet sniffling. She knew that there were Beowolves in the woods not far from the house, but they usually stayed away because they were afraid of her father. But he wasn't there now. Yang felt her heart pound against her soggy shirt as she lay motionless on the floor, holding herself still to avoid the floorboards squeaking. She had hidden Spark Celica in a box under her bed, but if she ran to get them, whatever was outside would hear her. If she could move quietly, it might not… or it might have a head start.

Frozen with indecision, she stayed on the floor. Maybe if she was quiet, it would go away. She held her breath for as long as she could, until she couldn't, at which point she strained against her lungs to take the shallowest, quietest breath possible. She had no one to blame for this but herself, she realized. She had decided to stay home, she had thought about the thing she wasn't supposed to think about. It really wasn't so different than the ill-fated "adventure" she and Ruby had a few years back, except she knew that Qrow wasn't going to be around to save her. She let her head slump against the floor, which produced an audible thud. She would have been more concerned if she hadn't given up already. She waited for the sound of the door crashing in.

Instead, there was a knock.

"Yang! Are you in there?"

Bewildered, Yang rose from the floor and headed for the front door. She was even more bewildered to find Silene standing outside, with a moped caught in a rut behind her. The rain had flattened the Faunus' unruly hair to her forehead, exposing the full length of her still-growing horns. Around her shoulders was a stained jacket that Yang had seen before.

"I heard you lived out in the sticks," she grinned. "But I didn't know you actually lived in a house _made of sticks_."

The girl waited, unresponsive, as she held the door open. Her mind, which moments ago had been working studiously at its own self-destruction, was now completely upended. She tried to say something, but words failed her. She opted instead to point towards the inside of the house, which Silene understood, and walked inside.

"Your house is small," Silene noted, running a hand through her soaked hair. "It's pretty cool."

"Um," mumbled Yang, still trying to understand what had just happened.

Silene shuffled through the entryway and past the kitchen table. "What's up with the silent treatment? Are you sick or something? You look terrible."

"I… no, I'm not-"

"That's good to hear," said the older girl. "We need to talk. In private."

"We're alone here," Yang explained.

Silene's eyes shifted back and forth between the windows on either side of the house.

" _More_ private," she intoned.

"Oh… uh… yeah. Sure."

Yang led Silene to her room, where the Faunus immediately shut and latched the door behind them. She then carefully stepped over a pile of dirty laundry to draw the blinds shut. She dropped her messenger bag onto the bed. She looked down at the bag, and then up at Yang.

"It's in there," she whispered.

"What?" asked Yang.

"All of it. All of the answers."

"About what happened?"

Silene sat down on the bed and opened the messenger bag, removing an unmarked folder, which she opened to reveal page after page of splotchy-looking documents.

"And then some."

Yang took a closer look at the papers, which were mostly words, and frequent black bars that covered up spaces where other words would normally be.

"How are you supposed to read this?"

"You're not. That's the point. This is stuff that somebody didn't want anybody else to read. Super-secret." Silene plucked the papers out of Yang's hand and read aloud.

"Orders for investigation: Possible emergence of blank. According to blank, reliable source, the prophesied successor to blank has been located. Source reports that blank is blank of Mr. blank, blank at Signal Academy. Infiltrate Signal Academy and acquire blank of blank. Assess blank blank of Signal Academy. Obtain blank of Mr. blank. It is our hope that with this information, we can advance our righteous struggle."

"So they _were_ White Fang," Yang murmured.

"Yep. And they lost this." Silene drew a thick envelope from within the papers.

"What is it?"

Silene rapped at the edge of the envelope with the back of her hand. "Most likely, it's the blank blank of Signal Academy, and the blank of Mr. blank."

Yang felt a slightly-different form of fear swirling in her stomach. It was no less concerning than before.

"What are you going to do with this?"

Silene took a deep breath. "We're going to do the right thing. We're going to take it to the people that need to see it." She slipped the papers back into the folder, with the envelope tucked back behind them. "We're going to take it to the White Fang."

The silence between them carried on for longer than Yang believed possible. She watched Silene's face for any hint of a smile, an up-turn at the eyes, anything that might indicate a joke. There were none. All the while, Silene was clearly watching her reaction as well, and was not pleased. Slowly, the older girl's face twisted into a frown.

"I take it that you're not in, then?"

"It's not that-"

"Then what is it?"

"Are the White Fang really who we should take it to?"

Silene exhaled slowly. It was like a sigh, except much more purposeful. She averted her eyes from Yang, directing them towards the closed blinds of the window. It was a clumsy execution, but Yang had seen it before. Her father tended to look away when he told her things about her real mother.

"Do you like me, Yang?"

The question was not one that Yang had been prepared for.

"You're my best friend," Yang replied weakly.

"But do you really care about me?"

"What do you mean?"

"If someone hurt me, what would you do?"

"I would… I would make them stop."

"Would you?" Yang didn't like the way Silene said that- like she was blaming her.

"I would! I'd hurt _them_ , right back!"

Silene kept her eyes distant. She smiled- was that the answer she had wanted?

"The only way to change how a person thinks, how a person _feels_ , is pain. Pain is the only thing that can tear down the walls they've built. You get that, Yang. That's good."

Yang wasn't sure if she would describe that statement as _good_ , but she also couldn't deny how correct it seemed. From her episode in the kitchen, she knew how much pain had changed the way she thought and felt. Silene was very good at making sense out of things, but it always made Yang feel a little uncomfortable. Silene would tell her that the truth _was_ uncomfortable.

"Humans have always treated Faunus like dirt. It happened before, it's happening now, and it's going to keep happening. Out there, in the real world, being a Faunus means you get called names. It means you can't get jobs. It means you get _hurt_ , Yang. People, just like me, get hurt. Kids your age are kept out of schools. Old men get beaten up because they don't have a place to sleep. The Schnee Dust Company butchers Faunus by the thousands, maximizing their profits with slave labor!"

Silene turned back to Yang, taking the smaller girl by the shoulders. She knelt down and looked directly into her eyes once again.

"Now, tell me," she asked, her voice soft again. "What will change the way they think?"

Yang understood. Before she said anything, she nodded. The words were just a formality, like please and thank-you.

"You hurt them."

Silene didn't smile any wider than she already was, but Yang could see it in her eyes- pride, excitement. She leaned forward, uncomfortably close, like the truth she professed.

"So," she whispered. "Are you in?"

Yang swallowed hard, and made the right choice.

"Yeah. I'm in."

"Good," said Silene, who stood up and released her grip on Yang's shoulders. "I'll let you get ready."

"Where are we going?"

Silene reached into her re-appropriated jacket's pocket and removed a small paper rectangle- a matchbook. Printed in elaborate font across the front flap were the words "WOLVES' DEN".

"I did my research. It's an old Faunus bar, not far from the docks. They've got some overnight rooms upstairs. It makes sense that they'd hole up there."

Yang's lingering unease had transformed back into fear. Did Silene really know what she was doing? Yang _lived_ on Patch, and she wasn't familiar with that part of town. And if Qrow's stories were any indication, bars were not places for children.

"You really had to _dig_ for that information," she mumbled.

"Yeah, I-" Silene's face split into a wicked grin when she realized. "Oh! That's a _nice_ one!"

Yang felt a little comfort in the humor. "Because a den… and they'd hole up," she explained, if only for her own reference.

"Yang, you never fail to disappoint. But we need to get moving. We don't have a lot of time. Are you ready to go?"

"No, I… I need to clean up a little," said Yang, looking down at her soggy shirt.

Silene nodded in agreement, unlatching the door and sidling out. "All right, no sense in looking unprofessional."

Once the older girl was gone, Yang replaced her shirt with a clean Signal-branded one, which in her house were work shirts on account of how easy they were for faculty to get. She also found her favorite scarf hidden in her pillowcase and cinched it up securely against her neck. Her socks were adjusted to her liking- one stretched as far as it could go, the other bunched up. She pulled on her shoes and tightened the laces. Only one thing was left. She reached beneath the bed and removed the box containing Spark Celica. Only a few rounds were left on each of the belts. Yang didn't want to let Silene down, but she was afraid. None of this seemed right- Yang was again reminded of the "adventure".

 _No._ She told herself, clenching her fists as she strapped the weapon to her arms. _This will be different._


	8. Good Guys

It was getting dark by the time they arrived at the bar. The moped was slow to start with, and an additional occupant did not help matters. They had also gotten a little lost, which was to be expected when neither one of them knew how to get where they were going. But after much trial and error, they did find the Wolves' Den, tucked on the corner of a grimy street only a block away from the pier. It was an old building that traded windows for half-functional neon lights. Nothing about the situation made Yang feel any better, except that it _had_ stopped raining. Silene knocked out the kickstand and dismounted the moped, with Yang following suit.

"Just follow my lead. Don't say or do anything I don't tell you to. In there, I can pass for a grown-up. But you're going to be pretty suspicious, so I've got a backup plan."

Silene reached into her messenger bag and removed a headband with some clumsily-fashioned felt ears sewed on.

"In-cog- _neato_ ," murmured Yang.

The Faunus smiled and gave Yang's hair a casual ruffle, fluffing it up enough to help hide the headband. Silene then drew a case from her borrowed jacket's pocket and extracted a cigarette and lighter, which she fumbled with once before successfully catching the far end alight. To Yang, it seemed like she had done it before.

"All right," said Silene after exhaling a puff of smoke. "Let's do this."

Yang's experience with bars was limited to what she had seen in movies and Qrow's half-intelligible field stories. The Wolves' Den was roughly what she had pictured, but far less pleasant. The first impression it made was its smell, which was equal parts smoke, fish, and something faintly reminiscent of Zwei's occasional accidents. It was tiny, with only a few stools at the bar crammed up against the far wall, and a pair of fully-occupied card tables opposite the counter. At the back of the room, a stairwell climbed upwards, its flickering incandescent light a stark contrast to the dark haze that filled the rest of the establishment.

Silene immediately headed for the counter, and Yang had no choice but to follow. Her heartbeat nearly drowned out the clatter of glass and the boisterous discussions of the dock workers, who hadn't seemed to notice them. The Faunus took a seat and the faux-Faunus followed suit, resisting the urge to spin on the stool's swivel. The bartender, whose only remaining hair hovered above his floppy scent-hound ears, set the cup he had been polishing down in order to give the newcomers a once-over. He narrowed his eyes, wrinkled his nose, leaned forward, and asked a piercing question.

"What can I get you?"

Yang could only attribute this response to either the effectiveness of her disguise or the old man's failing eyesight, of which the latter seemed more probable.

"Strawberry Sunrise. No ice," replied Silene, who really did make herself sound like one of the cool guys in the movies. This illusion did not last long.

"What kind of place do you think this is?"

Yang detected the frustration and embarrassment in Silene's determined visage, but it passed quickly. She could turn nearly anything around.

"The kind of place with two White Fang agents upstairs," she whispered. The bartender's eyes widened, and Yang felt a silence creep over the room. She was enraptured by the power of Silene's words, until she realized that this was no imaginary effect- the room had grown more quiet. The loud men at the table were no longer sharing their crass discussions- they were listening.

"That's none of your business," the bartender breathed.

"It's _all_ of my business," cooed Silene. "We're here to deliver a message to them."

The old man trembled, his ears hanging slack against his head. "Get out of here, now."

"Why should they leave? They haven't even gotten their drinks yet," said a voice from behind. It was a huge man, a head taller than Silene, with cruel-looking horns that put her little stubs to shame raking forwards alongside his heavy brow. He wore a mostly-unbuttoned raincoat over a damp wifebeater that clearly defined his extraordinarily muscular torso- he definitely spent most of his time lifting heavy objects.

"I'm sorry," gulped the bartender, ducking behind the counter. Silene swiveled on her bar stool, crossing her arms as she leaned back. Yang was terrified, but Silene looked so stoic, as if she was being accosted by a toddler. She took a long drag on the cigarette, the glow inching down its length.

"To whom do I owe the pleasure?"

The huge Faunus smiled, his lips twisted up in malice. "Everybody here calls me Blue, but it doesn't make much of a difference what _you_ call me."

"And why's that?"

"Because my boys and I got paid a mountain of lien to make sure that if any more White Fang punks came through that door, they'd be leaving in a body bag," he cackled, as the six other dock workers rose from their seats. Yang's hand shot out from her side to clamp around Silene's, an involuntary reaction.

"Don't," she whispered. "They're not like Gregor." The older girl didn't even seem to notice.

"Amazing," Silene grunted. "You know, it's people like you who are the real problem. The machine's never going to stop running if you keep oiling its gears."

"Ain't no guilt trip worth fifty grand, punk."

Silene looked down at the cowering Yang and gave her a reassuring smile. She briefly- just briefly- locked her bigger fingers in between the girl's smaller ones. "How are we going to change their minds, Yang?"

Yang felt her body quake in terror. They were in trouble, the kind of trouble they couldn't get out of without someone getting hurt. The kind of trouble that kids weren't supposed to be in. The kind of trouble that Yang had been in before when she decided to go looking for her missing mother. She felt the gnawing fear crawl up her body again, but it withered when she realized she had a way out. It was like Silene said- she _could_ change their minds. She felt the weight of the gauntlets strapped to her arms, and her fear was replaced by something else. _Hope_ was the wrong word, but the meaning was clear, burning, and innate- something _clicked_. These men, they were doing something bad. And the solution was to do something bad _back._ It made so much sense now. Their odds were not good, but she felt herself not caring. The grim reality had been completely disconnected from her reasoning.

"We hurt them," she replied.

"You've got it," smirked Silene, crushing her spent cigarette in the center of her palm as she rose from her stool. Blue cracked his knuckles and charged at Silene, following into a wild haymaker. Silene read the attack and pulled to the right at the last second, hooking her left foot around his while jamming an elbow into the back of his head. The man toppled forward and crashed jaw-first into the bar, upended almost exactly how Gregor had tripped Silene in their sparring match. Yang was surprised to see the move again, but she was too excited by the energy of the moment to care. She disengaged the safety on her right-hand gauntlet and forced her fist up into Blue's stomach. She hadn't done the tough exercises Signal students were assigned, and so her punch lacked any real force. But it did serve to actuate Spark Celica's firing mechanism, which focused enough kinetic Dust at her target to blast him backwards off the bar and onto a waiting table, which gave out under the force of his impact.

"Well, boys," roared Silene with glee, "who else wants a lesson?"

The other dock workers eagerly rushed forward, perhaps motivated to avenge Blue, or perhaps eager to collect a payout that had just increased proportionally to the number of them still standing. Yang had been frightened of the big men before, but as she rolled underneath a slow swipe she realized that their situation was not as bleak as she had previously thought. Sure, they really were trying to hurt them, but they were a few steps beyond tipsy. They reminded her of the time that Qrow "had a bad day" and decided to stay at their house, stumble-y and mumble-y. Yang found herself laughing as the balding man who had tried to strike her nearly tripped over his own foot, lurching towards the ground before regaining his balance.

She stopped laughing when a boot caught her on her right side, sending her skidding across the bare concrete floor. At first it felt like a warm numbness, but the sensation quickly unfolded into intense physical agony, to a degree she wasn't sure she had ever felt before. She tried to pick herself up, but it only made the pain worse. The boot's owner, a bearded man with an impressive scar running up the outside of his jaw, began to storm towards her again. Every fiber of her being told her to run, but she knew it wasn't an option. Scar swung his foot back again, and Yang braced herself. She felt the impact, the floor sliding underneath her as she was propelled by the second kick. She felt the pain flare and burn again, forcing her teeth together and her eyes shut. But something was different. The ache that had lingered before disappeared almost instantly. Yang opened her eyes, and caught a fleeting glimpse of a faint shimmer, slightly golden, over her stomach.

Defensive Aura utilization was the most important thing that any Huntsman or Huntress was taught at Signal, or so her dad had told her. It was the difference between life and death. 'Aura, the Ethereal Manifestation of Life Itself, Mankind's Last Line of Defense Against the Grimm' was the title of a term paper he had written when he was still learning, which he had on a few desperate occasions used to lull her to sleep. Yang had not paid much attention to it; after all, it was boring, which was a compelling incentive to drift away into dreams. She knew it was important information for a would-be Huntress, but she also knew she would get a full course worth of training when she attended Signal. There was something about the will to defend oneself, and an 'eager soul', or something like that. It was complicated, and not everyone could manage their Aura like that, but in that moment Yang knew that the world and all of its prickles couldn't scratch her.

Yang pushed through the numbness and forced herself to her feet before Scar could catch back up to her. Out of the corner of her eye she detected a swarming of limbs and crashing chairs, but they were irrelevant to her. Her world was Scar, her Aura, her fists.

"Fucking kid," swore Scar, shooting a hand towards her scarfed neck. Yang forced her right arm up, blocking his attempt to strangle her. She clamped her small hand around his wrist, and with her left, punched up into the underside of his elbow. Spark Celica amplifying her strike with enough force to produce a distinct snapping sound that could be heard above the shotgun blast. His elbow joint loosened considerably, his hand falling away as Yang released it. He clutched his limp arm with his free hand and wailed, tripping over an overturned chair as he retreated hastily. She now set her sights on Baldy, who had propped himself up against the bar for stability. Yang took off at a sprint towards him, making sure to step on Scar as she passed, and channeled her momentum into a tackle aimed at his legs. Baldy had not been prepared for this, and he lacked the coordination to save himself from an embarrassing tumble. Yang picked herself up and drew her right arm back, loading another round into Spark Celica, before driving it down into his left shin. Nothing snapped, but Yang was certain he would not be getting up to chase her any time soon.

Across the room, Silene traded blows with two younger-looking dock workers- a portly man with tusk-like teeth rising from his lower jaw, and the solitary woman in the lot, whose gnarled sideburns accented two large, slightly rounded ears that looked much more convincing than the fake ones Yang currently wore. They shot straight for Silene's gut, for her sides, for her chest, but she seemed unfazed, rolling with the punches. She waited until they tired of their assault, and violently knocked their heads together. They fainted together into an uncomfortable-looking pile, and Silene hacked up a spitwad to christen their defeated forms. Yang gave her a thumbs-up, but Silene did not seem so optimistic.

"Look out!" she yelped, eyes widening. Yang realized why when a muscular arm swept up underneath her chin, pulling her off the ground as it tightened around her throat. Yang tried to scream, but the sound was stifled by the pressure. She squirmed her head up to find her attacker, a dark-haired man with a real-life eyepatch, scowling down at her.

"A fighter, are you?" he grunted, a forked tongue flitting out of his mouth. Yang flung a foot backwards, her heel landing between his legs. This loosened his grip enough for her to wriggle backward and sink her teeth into the bulging forearm flesh. Eyepatch screeched and ripped his arm away; Yang fell to the floor, landing on her knees. Aura absorbed a little of the impact, but not all of it. As she gulped down air, she realized he could have killed her. That he still could- she heard him shuffling behind her back. Silene rushed towards her, but was tackled to the ground by another man. Yang was alone, in pain, and afraid. It made her head hurt, sharp and ringing, right at the top and front and back and sides and it made the floor and the walls and the lights all white and blurry and she just wanted it to stop, to go away and be at home and curl up in bed but _no_ she had to _do_ something and the blurries made her _feel_ weird and the man reached out his hand to hit her and she _knew_ and stopped it and pulled him down and buried her fist in his stomach, _bang_ , _scream, collapse_ , and everything slowed back down.

The pain drifted down from her head and into her right hand as she blinked the white out of her vision. Eyepatch was slumped against the back wall, head lolled forwards, blood trickling out from between his lips. No one was choking her anymore, but she still felt as if she was suffocating.

"Wh… wha… whaaat," she croaked, confused. From behind her came the now-familiar dull thud of a body falling to the ground, followed by heavy footsteps. They skidded to a stop early.

"Yang, are you… are you all right?"

A hand on her shoulder, accepted this time.

"Hey, Yang? C'mon. Are you all right?"

"I don't know," she sniffled. "I don't want to do this again."

"We won't have to," said Silene with a solemn frown, accented by a fresh black eye. "Let's go."

Silene readjusted her messenger bag and helped Yang to her feet. Together, they entered the narrow stairway and ascended to the second floor, where a single doorway waited.

"Hey," said the older girl, her voice low and clear. "We didn't just beat the shit out of those posers down there for nothing. I've got your stuff."

The door said nothing. Yang leaned against the wall, unsure of what it meant. Silene pulled the folder out, running scuffed-up fingers along the edges. "I'm going to slide it under the door, okay?" Yang watched the Faunus carefully edge it through the gap, pushing it all the way, her eyes wide. Silene was just as scared, just as unsure as she was. She, and by extension, Yang, had risked their lives to get here. They couldn't have done all of that for nothing, could they?

They waited for a minute until they heard the door unlatch and creak open. It was the smaller man, whose jacket Silene wore, that peeked through the gap.

"Are you _serious_?"

"Yes, sir," said Yang.

"Well… I, ah, thank you. You did a good thing. You gotta name or-"

"No," interrupted Silene.

"You're not going to let me finish?"

"You don't need to know about us. We don't need to know about you."

"Aren't you a little fucking professional? All right then, we'll stay strangers. We'll call the jacket hush-up money, got it?"

Silene nodded.

"Good. You've got a bright future ahead of you. Let's hope we never see each other again."

He closed the door, and spoke to someone else, who Yang guessed was the big man he had been travelling with before. Silene gestured towards the bottom of the steps, and they briskly made their way back down. The dock workers had not recovered. They were scattered across the floor in various states of incapacitation. Eyepatch seemed particularly limp. Yang made sure to look away from him as fast as possible. They carefully tiptoed around them, dodging arms and legs. The bartender emerged from behind the counter, surveying the destruction in fear.

"Just put it on my tab," chuckled Silene, opening the door.

Night hung heavy and wet outside, splashing up at them from puddles in the gnarled downtown streets. Yang buried her face in Silene's back as they rode away. The moped's engine struggled against their combined weight but ultimately held out until it could deposit the smaller of its two burdens back at her house. Yang dismounted the vehicle into a muddy slick, and would have fallen if the older girl hadn't caught her.

"Thanks," mumbled Yang, who was so tired she considered falling anyway, just to lie down.

"No, thank you," Silene replied. "I couldn't have done that without you. And I'm sorry you had to do… you know, all of that. But this stays between us, got it? Just us, 'cause we're a team."

"Mmm-hmm," groaned Yang through a yawn. She was sore and cold and miserable. She wished she could be as excited as Silene must have been, but instead she felt something else. She had found a new way to be scared. Not of being alone or getting hurt- she was scared of herself. She had broken grown-ups like they were cheap toys. Those men probably had kids like her. Would they be home to tuck them in tonight? She shuddered as she waved goodbye to Silene, who motored off into the night with an unlit cigarette between her teeth. What was that _thing_ that happened with Eyepatch? She had never felt something like that before. She wondered if she was sick, but there was no way she could tell her dad. He would make sure she never went to school then, and the thought of that made her feel even worse. None of this would have happened if she hadn't said yes to Silene, but she had. But she was right, wasn't she? They did the right thing. The Schnee Dust Company did bad things. They were the people in charge, keeping the little guy down. They hurt people because they could, because it made them richer. That made the White Fang the good guys, it had to.

She didn't feel like a good guy.

She went inside and explained to her dad that she had gotten bored at home alone and decided to hang out with Silene and play video games.

Her father reached into the refrigerator and began to unpack some leftovers to reheat. "What video games?"

"Uh… Remnant Defender 3," she answered.

"Lucky," squealed Ruby, who was swinging a broom in low, controlled arcs in the living room.

"I was wondering why Silene wasn't in class today," said her dad, slicing a small portion of meatloaf onto a plate. "I'll let her off the hook, since she's keeping you company."

"Y-yeah," sighed Yang, who suddenly realized she was still wearing Spark Celica underneath her coat. She tried to look as normal as she could as she bolted to her room, her fingers scrambling to undo the straps. She had just shoved the box back under her bed when her dad opened the door and set a plate on her dresser. She thanked him, but couldn't bring herself to eat. Every piece of her world was coming undone. Was this what growing up was? She crawled under the covers and decided to be a child for a little while longer.


	9. Incandescence

Her scroll buzzed against the top of the nightstand, inching its way towards the edge. Silene reluctantly extended her hand from under the sheets to save it and brought it level with her freshly-opened eyes. Upon seeing the caller, she decided to let it ring for a while longer. As she rose, the bed groaned beneath her in defiance of her weight. It did not give out underneath her, however, which she was grateful for. The motel room had many shortcomings, but its functionality overruled them all. It had a bed to sleep in, it had a closet for her luggage, it was walking distance from a convenience store, and the TV got CCT pay-per-view porn. There wasn't much more that was reasonable to ask for, especially for the price she was paying. She placed her feet on the floor and stood, which released the bed from its torment. Light was only just beginning to break over the horizon, filtering down to her window between the shadows of larger buildings and the mighty towers of Beacon. In the dim light, she scrounged for a pack of cigarettes and found one that was not quite empty yet. After locating her lighter, she flicked the flame on and lit her first smoke of the day, watching the fire-flower bloom in the darkness.

She pulled over the office chair that was crammed under the desk and collapsed into it, which immediately overloaded its gas cylinder. It sank down to its lowest setting and complained as she swiveled around to grab the remote off of the dresser. The holo-screen flickered on at her command, returning to the cheap smut she queued up the night before. It was a hokey themed piece, based on Pumpkin Pete's cereal. The actor who portrayed Pete was Hopalong Cottontail, who Silene had seen in other equally-tasteless productions. He was the deciding factor for her purchase. The actress was a nobody, which was unsurprising. She was supposed to be one of the athletes featured on the limited-edition boxes, and there was something bizarrely familiar about her that Silene couldn't quite put her finger on, though she did try to- she was the reason Silene decided to watch all the way through. Was it that far-off, contemplative look in her eyes? The uncertain way her mouth quivered? Silene had paused the movie to examine her more, dragging on her cigarette as she focused on each part of her face. She wasn't looking down at Cottontail, or even towards the camera, but instead towards the wall of the set. When coupled with her plaintive expression, she gave the general impression of a pathetic caged animal, which was astoundingly at odds with the un-serious tone of the film. Was it meant to be the character, or was it the actress? What made her feel that way? There was more to it than just a strange O-face, Silene was certain. The scroll rung again, and with some trepidation, she decided to answer.

"Hello?" she grunted.

"Zelenova," oozed the voice of her employer. "I've been sitting by my scroll, waiting for a call back for _ages_. Can you tell me why?"

"Because you've got nothing better to do?" smirked Silene, extinguishing what remained of her cigarette in an overflowing ashtray.

"Because I expected results _yesterday_."

"I don't think _your_ expectations are _my_ fault."

A long silence followed.

"If you fail me, the consequences will be severe," her employer finally replied, before hanging up.

"What a bitch," groaned Silene, trading her scroll for the remote and pushing play. The actors returned to motion, but the redhead's face was still frozen, her dull gaze fixed towards nothing. As the film reached its end, Silene's questions went unanswered. The actress kept her expression up, and as soon as the sex was over, she snapped back into typical bad-acting mode. It had been a waste of time, but not an unenjoyable one. But she knew she couldn't dawdle for much longer. Her employer had connections- it would not be wise to let her down. Silene rose out of the chair and headed for the too-small shower. Today was going to be a big day.

* * *

"…which brings us to the most popular combat doctrine of duality," said Mr. Branwen, propping an elbow against his lectern. "Anybody out there know what that means?"

The students, who had no qualms chattering amongst themselves while the teacher was talking, suddenly fell silent. Branwen's eyes traced their way across the room like a pair of laser sights, seeking easy targets. A feeble whimper meant they had locked on.

"Finnegan, how about you? Can you tell me about the doctrine of duality?"

Finnegan fidgeted with his tie and tried to covertly page through his textbook for an answer.

"Without your notes, I mean," Mr. Branwen clarified.

"Uh… it's… uh…"

"All right, Finnegan, we've heard enough. Anybody else?"

A grey-clad arm rose above the rest of the trembling heads.

"Gainsboro, what have you got?"

"It's like the two sides of any battle," Gregor said firmly. "Attack and defense." He turned his gaze down the aisle towards Silene and flashed her a smile. Silene had not been looking towards him, so the gesture was completely wasted.

"No, Gainsboro. That's not it," replied Mr. Branwen, adding injury to insult. "Last chance for guesses. Any takers? All right, here's your answer."

Mr. Branwen moved away from the lectern, lining himself up with the center of the room. He stood, breathed in, scratched behind his ear, and shrugged.

"I don't know, either."

This provoked laughter from many of the students, but indignant silence from Finnegan and Gainsboro.

"Words like 'doctrine of duality' are made up by stuffy old guys- I mean, stuffier and older than me. When you're out there in the field, chances are you're not going to be remembering back to this classroom and the vocab lists you had to memorize. You're going to need to make decisions fast. A pack of Beowolves is bearing down on you, you've got three rounds left in your last clip and nowhere left to run. Are you going to recite the doctrine of duality to them?"

The class shook their heads in one accord.

"Finnegan, what would you do instead?"

The boy, unprepared for a second question, pulled at his tie again. "Uh… m-my weapon has a sword mode. I'd… slash at them, I guess?"

"Right on the money, Finnegan. Although I don't think you'd get very far, that's the best course of action you've got. Sure, some Grimm have armor plate, but most have plenty of soft spots, too. Perfect to exploit with a blade or blunt instrument. And because the Beowolf sometimes uses its forepaws for movement, there are always openings to look for. But let's imagine for a moment that you're not being attacked by Beowolves. Let's say you've been hired to track down a thief, and you've got him cornered. But he's a step ahead and he's taken a hostage. They've got a knife on their throat. How do you stop them? Would you use your sword?"

"N-no," replied Finnegan. "I guess I'd shoot them."

"I guess you'd be right. Of course such a delicate situation probably isn't best dealt with in a hail of bullets, but you still knew that the better option would be to shoot him. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the doctrine of duality."

A murmur of understanding swept across the classroom.

"You see, there's a reason so many popular weapon designs have more than one function. Yes, many huntsmen and huntresses work as teams. But operating solo is a common occurrence even within team structures. A weapon with a variety of functions reduces your equipment load while letting you handle a variety of situations. But you already know that. You've all built your weapons already. That's why the fun part is called 'the doctrine of synchronicity'. Now, who thinks they can take a crack at that one? Zelenova?"

Silene leaned back in her chair, which was not intended for someone of her height. "Actually, sir, I have a different question."

"All right, shoot."

"What you said with the two different scenarios… do you mean that melee weapons are less effective against people?"

"Well, it's situational. But there's a reason the police carry guns, and not swords. A trained huntsman or huntress with a close-range weapon is definitely more effective than any joe of the street with a gun. But blades can be stopped by Aura. People can't swing a sword as fast as a bullet. So a close-up duel usually becomes a contest of whose Aura wears through first. In order for a melee weapon to be as effective as a bullet in piercing Aura, it'd have to wear its target out in one strike. Pure speed is off the table, unless you've got some kind of speed semblance."

"I don't," Silene answered.

"Then the only option you have left would be to have your weapon strike its target uncountable times in the span of one slash. Frankly, that's a mystery to me. Anyway, don't you have those punching gauntlets?"

"Oh, ah, yeah," the Faunus stammered. "I was just curious, that's all."

Mr. Branwen narrowed his eyes, and opened his mouth to comment, but the bell interrupted him. The students began to scramble for their messenger bags, cramming pencils and paper inside.

"It looks like curiosity killed the _class_ ," he smirked. "Now get out of here, all of you."

The students gleefully obliged and emptied the classroom. Silene actually enjoyed Mr. Branwen's class, though she did not like his prying. What did it matter to him if she didn't actually have a weapon? It wasn't his grade to give, so why was he concerned? It didn't matter. As long as she participated in class and completed her assignments, Branwen wouldn't step on her toes. Or shouldn't. She would learn what she wanted to, one way or another. She left the Combat building to a pleasantly blue sky, a welcome break from all of the misty weather. It'd be nice to have someone to enjoy the day with, but she hadn't seen Yang since their delivery to the Wolves' Den. Mr. Xiao Long hadn't said anything to her about it, so Yang hadn't snitched. Yang had mentioned that she felt weird after the fight, but there was no way for Silene to ask if she had gotten worse without exposing herself. She had ditched the scooter afterwards to avoid anyone following her trail, so there wasn't a feasible way for her to visit the cabin again.

_The dummy's in limbo_ , she thought, taking a seat on a path-side bench. She was done with classes for the day, and the idea of absolute idleness disgusted her. She wished she had _something_ productive to do. She returned to her oft-considered idea of humoring Gainsboro with a date followed by ditching him at a theater. She found the image of him crying his eyes out in the dark immensely satisfying. She took a furtive glance around her to check for any lingering teachers, and drew a cigarette from the pack hidden in her messenger bag. She lit it with her stolen lighter and dragged on it slowly, to avoid coughing. What was it about her that Gainsboro liked so much? It certainly couldn't be her personality, she asserted, knowing that she purposely acted as repellent as possible to him. It must have been physical then. She had heard of Faunus Fever before but had never been sure what stance to take on it. Some of the books she read said it was a prejudiced holdover, humans desiring control and intimate mastery over an animal mate. Others said it was sexualized exoticism; the Faunus having been _othered_ by human society made them forbidden fruit.

Silene didn't really care about either theory. There were little Faunus girls been sold as sex slaves in Mistral- _that_ was what to get concerned about. That was the kind of thing the White Fang needed to act on. Not sugar daddies with a taste for feathers and fur. That train of thought brought Silene to the most reasonable conclusion: Gainsboro had a fetish for scales. The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. _That_ was why he always made eye contact, unlike the rest of the boys his age. It certainly had nothing to do with her less-than mammalian mammary glands. He was staring at her scales! The only time he had stared anywhere else was when she had worn a tank top for field day, and he had burned his eyes into her shoulders, even when talking to her. It all made sense, now. To think that her mother had spent all of that time telling her about how to traditionally ornament her horns, when it was her scales that were getting attention.

_Suck it, mom! Having small horns_ doesn't _matter!_ She thought, drawing on her cigarette. She had never really considered her scales very much, since back home it was very clearly established that their kind were concerned with _horns_ above all else. But they had always been around, and there were certainly more of them now than ever. Her scales grew in patches, divvying up her softer, more human skin. She had one patch underneath each of her eyes, hanging in the space humans had freckles. Another set protruded on the other side of her eyes, where humans had eyebrows. Another set graced her shoulders, crawling up from her back to rest on their upper surface. A few were scattered on her thighs, but the largest patch was on her back, running down her neck and fanning out into an emerald plain between her shoulder blades. From there it stretched down, tapering into a narrow strip that followed her spine down, stopping short of her tailbone. Most of them were new- puberty's fault.

The spurt had been at its worst back in Atlas, which made her easy prey for the kids with anti-Faunus parents. None of them had a fetish, or if they did, they kept it far back in the closet. They would poke and prod and jeer. But their words weren't what had scared her. It was her own body, exploding with more and more green every week. She knew that she looked like her parents, but she didn't like them. And she certainly didn't like the helplessness she felt as she watched a patch grow in the span of a weekend. Her body was meant to operate the way _she_ wanted it to. It was _hers_. But no amount of clawing and scraping made the scales go away. She had lived in a waking nightmare, until she woke up one morning to find she had grown an entire inch taller overnight. And the next week, another inch. Then two inches. Then one. Then another two. Then three. She no longer feared the scales. They no longer took away her control- they _gave_ her control. She towered over her classmates. She still didn't care if they called her freak, but now she could toss them around like toys if she wanted to. She indulged this want frequently. Her parents decided that combat school would be a productive channel for the violence, and they were mostly right. But Atlas's junior school was a dystopian nightmare, all of the clean white uniforms and drills. The anti-Faunus kids weren't any better there, and to make matters worse, they all had Schnee connections. It was insufferable, but Silene knew the perfect way out. She broke some limbs that didn't belong to her and got herself expelled. She made it clear to her parents that the problem with school was the _people_ , and convinced them to transfer her with little resistance. Only a few junior combat schools had international acclaim, and Signal was one of them. So far, it had been about as she had expected. Yang was the exception.

She leaned her head over the bench's back and stared up at the sky, adding a stream of smoke to the wispy clouds overhead. The sun, alone in the cold void of space, kept on shining. Yang really was alone, but Silene could see the light from a long ways off. She hoped that the kid could put it to good use. The sound of a distant engine disturbed the peace- Silene sat up and searched for the source. A white dot glimmered at the edge of the horizon, growing larger by the moment. It grew wings and a tail, taking the shape of an armored dropship. The aircraft slowed as it approached, swiveling its engines down into landing configuration. Silene tossed her cigarette to the ground and stomped it out hastily. The ship drifted down into the center of campus, landing in the middle of a footpath. A bold gear-shaped crest was painted on the broad part of its fuselage: Atlas.

"Shit," Silene whispered, picking up her messenger bag. She knew that this visit was no coincidence. They were here because of what she and Yang had done. She started towards the common hall, a path oblique to the dropship. She needed to keep a low profile, in case they knew exactly who they were looking for. The loading ramp unfolded, and the dropship disgorged its cargo. A man, tall and broad-shouldered, with hair as black as his suit was white; and a girl that seemed to be his opposite, small and dainty. Her hair was almost whiter than anything Silene had ever seen, if she hadn't seen it before on TV. Her heart pounded. She knew that girl, knew what she stood for.

Her name was Winter Schnee. She was one of the worst people in the world. And she had just come to the wrong school.

A door opened behind Silene, and she turned with a start.

"H-hey, Silene," said Yang through a mouthful of cookie.

It took a moment for Silene to move her mind from one surprise to another.

"Yang… you're all right."

"Yeah," mumbled Yang weakly. "Do… do you want a cookie?"

Silene looked back over her shoulder. The Atlesians were headed straight for the administrative offices.

"Sure thing," she replied, and entered the commons. Yang guided her to a seat under the framed papers. There was a plate of cookies waiting. Most of them had been reduced to crumbs already. Silene found a whole one and began to chew.

"I'm sorry," Yang said, the look on her face indicating that she wasn't talking about cookies. "After what happened I… just felt a little afraid to go out. That's all."

"Hey, that's all right. Fear is natural. It's a survival instinct," Silene said, placing a hand on the smaller girl's shoulder. "I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't a little afraid."

Yang looked out the window. "Are you leaving?"

"No. But we need to talk about that."

"Who are they?"

"The bad guys, Yang. They might know about what happened. But not everything. I… I might have a plan. But I need your help."

Yang looked down at the plate of cookies sullenly. "They're the bad guys?"

"The Schnee Dust Company."

Yang placed her hands in her lap and locked eyes with Silene, her sunlight dimmed behind a cloud of worry.

"I don't want to hurt anyone."

"We shouldn't have to."

"Okay," breathed Yang, barely audible.

"Just stick to me and do what I tell you," said Silene, rising from the table. "If this works… we're going to make the world a better place."

"You're sure?" asked Yang, following the Faunus to the door.

"I'm sure. Everything's going to end right here."


	10. Ignition

The office door swung open, and Qrow Branwen stomped inside.

"You had better give me a good reason for showing up here uninvited," he growled to his guest, who was waiting patiently in the armchair across from his desk.

"National security," answered the white-suited man.

"And that gives you the right to bring an armed ship to this school without any warning?"

"No, it doesn't. The headmaster's approval does, however."

"Shove your formalities up your ass, James. Gunships scare the kids."

"If they were being taught any international policy, they'd know that Atlas is one of Vale's strongest allies."

"It is _now_ ," huffed Qrow, slumping into his own chair. "What exactly is this security breach?"

"About two weeks ago a pair of White Fang agents left Patch. We don't know how or why they got here."

Qrow's annoyance began to fade, replaced by genuine concern.

"Your guys only spotted them once they were already done?"

"In terms of official Atlas operatives, yes. But we did catch wind of an unofficial operation, funded through Blizzard Limited, a shell corporation for the Schnee Dust Company. According to our source, Blizzard hired locals to intercept intel being carried by these White Fang operatives. There's no major base of operations for the White Fang on Patch, and almost no recruitment. If they were here for _something_ …"

Qrow nodded gravely, putting the pieces together. "They came for the school."

"I'm not here for Jacques, Qrow. I'm here because I owe you one," said James Ironwood, leaning forwards in his chair. "Signal doesn't have a lot of things that would interest them. But if the Fang somehow caught wind of your- of _our_ connections- it'd be a disaster."

"But how would they find out about Ozpin's secrets? Khan should be in the dark."

"We don't know yet. The most likely theory is that they were informed by an outside source, but if that source knew, why did they need a further investigation? It's still beyond us. That's why I'm here. We have to look for any evidence they left behind, anything they took. We have to learn what they learned."

"We can agree on that," said Qrow. "But how are you going to cover all of that ground on your own?"

"I'm not on my own," Ironwood laughed. "I've brought my star pupil. She's already surveying the campus now."

"I guess we'll see how special your operatives are," smirked Qrow, standing. "Let's get to work."

* * *

The girl purposefully marched down the footpath, a hand on her hip at all times. She seemed very determined and confident, though to Yang it was clear that she had no idea where she was going.

"She's heading towards the Combat building now."

"It's going to be common hour soon," contemplated Silene aloud from her hiding spot behind a trash can. "That building's going to be empty. That's how we'll confront her."

"She's pretty far down the way now. Let's go."

Silene rose from behind the trash can and worked her way up to a gentle jog, slow enough for Yang to keep up with her adult-sized strides. As they neared, Silene slowed back down to a walk, allowing their quarry to enter the building ahead of them.

"We'll lose her," Yang warned. Silene held up a finger in protest, standing still. Yang was about to ask why when the bell rung, and hundreds of students began to pour out of the building.

"Now," ordered Silene, and they advanced under the cover of the thunderous footsteps, swimming upstream against a current of people. Eventually the onslaught waned, and they emerged on the other side of the door with only a few stragglers still packing their bags. At the end of the corridor, the white-haired girl entered one of the demonstration halls. Silene charged ahead, and this time Yang struggled to keep up. She was more driven than Yang had ever seen her, her movements faster and more intense than at the Wolves' Den. She said that they wouldn't hurt anyone. This concerned Yang greatly. What was she planning to do once they caught this white-haired girl? On the other hand, Silene had never lied to her before. She had meant everything she had said before. What they had done had made her feel so sick inside that she had stayed home for more than a week, but Silene hadn't lied about any of it. She was scared of feeling that way again, but in her head she knew it must have been the right thing to do. Why did her heart disagree?

They reached the end of the hallway and darted into the demonstration hall, with its bleachers and floor-to-ceiling impulse field generators. The white-haired girl pulled out a scroll and began to slowly track it across the room, as if she were taking one long, boring video. When the door shut behind them, her concentration was broken. Yang watched Silene's fingers curl, digging into her palms.

"Um, hello there," said the girl, her ice-blue eyes blinking idly. "Do you have a class starting here? I'll get out of your way."

"No," said Silene, her voice hiding the force that her fists displayed. Already Yang could feel a cold sweat developing above her brow. "You don't need to."

"Well, all right then. It won't take long before I'm finished here," she replied, opening her scroll up again. Yang noticed why her hand had been at her hip- a sword hung from a belt there. Her uniform had pouches and buckles like a huntress. Armed and dangerous.

"You're Winter Schnee," Silene breathed.

The girl blinked again, and put her scroll away.

"Yes, that's right. Do I know you?"

Silene took a step forward. "You will."

Yang's heart began to pound. She was powerless to stop this. She was a Schnee. From what Silene had told her, they were rotten to the core. Did she deserve to get hurt, then? She couldn't find the answer.

Winter's hand came to rest on the hilt of her saber. "What do you want?"

"I want to talk," Silene said. Relief swept over Yang. It wasn't going to be so bad after all.

"About what?"

"About what your family does."

"My father? Or me?"

"All of you. I want to know how you sleep at night."

"I close my eyes and think happy thoughts," the girl replied. Her face was stern, like a picture Yang had once seen of a famous general's statue. She was older than either one of them-Yang hadn't realized because she was shorter than Silene, but the Faunus didn't make a good measuring stick. "Listen, my life is really complicated. I don't have time to explain it right now. I have a job to do."

"So do millions of people who work for you. But unlike you," Silene stepped forward again, "they don't get to sleep. No happy thoughts, I guess. They don't get to eat, either." Another step.

Winter's fingers locked onto her saber's hilt. "I'm not here to apologize for my father."

Silene continued to advance closer. "You should be."

"His crimes aren't mine."

"They are as long as you do nothing to stop them." Silene's rage was becoming visibly obvious now. Her eyebrow scales puffed out and her fangs were bared. Winter Schnee responded with something Yang had never seen a real human being do before. She turned her nose up and pouted.

"I can't believe I still have to deal with punks like you," she spat. "I gave up my place at the company so I could learn to actually _help_ people, and this is the thanks I get, _of course_. I don't make policy decisions, I couldn't if I tried. But yet you have the audacity to come here and yell at me like it's my fault! Well, it's not, you scaly freak!"

Silene, now within a few feet of Winter, stopped. Yang placed her hands on her chest, silently pleading with her heart to slow down.

"Oh," Silene said, her voice soft. "I see."

"Finally! Now if you would please-"

"Business is business, am I right?" Silene continued.

"Yes, that's right," Winter acknowledged. "I don't like it either but that's how it is."

"Well," Silene laughed, "what's funny is that everything in business has a price."

In an inelegant but unstoppable motion, Silene closed the remaining gap between them, locking her right arm around Winter's throat. She began to scream, but the Faunus clenched tighter and choked the yelp down to a miserable hiccup. Yang could only muster a gasp, but the cold panic that filled her body was sharper than any shrill sound her vocal cords could create. The gasp almost formed the word "no", but fell short.

It turned out that Silene could lie. She didn't like that.

Winter struggled against Silene's headlock, but her additional years of training couldn't make up for the gap in strength between them- the Faunus' arm remained resolutely in place. Silene yanked the girl around and began to drag her towards the door.

"W-what are-" babbled Yang, stumbling backwards.

"She doesn't have any say in things," grunted Silene, taking awkward limping steps forward as she wrestled against Winter's protests. "But her dad does. I think we can convince him to make some changes."

She barged back through the door shoulder first, picking up speed as Winter began to squirm slower and slower. She was wearing out already. Yang stumbled after them, numb to feeling. She tripped over her feet and struggled to get back up. She didn't know Winter and didn't know much about the Schnee Dust Company, but what was happening couldn't be right.

"All we need to do now is make our demands," Silene strained. She trudged down the hall and shoved her way through the exit, stomping out into the open. She used her free hand to fish through her coat pockets and removed her lighter. It caught with a flick of her thumb. "We're… we're further now than the White Fang has ever gotten! We're going to change the world!"

Yang watched Silene dangle the lighter under Winter's nose. The girl had stopped moving altogether now, but her eyes were open, wide with fear. Behind them, a third party entered the fray. The ground glowed blue in swirling rings, and a clawed arm emerged, white and blue, crisp, blinding in the sunlight. The disembodied limb made a low swipe and knocked Silene off her feet. Winter twisted as they fell, and struck the Faunus in the chin with her free elbow. She hadn't been weakening at all- she had been waiting. These two attacks were enough to shatter Silene's grip, and the girl broke away at a sprint. Silene awkwardly clawed her way back to her feet and prepared to give chase, but an unexpected weight had been added to her right ankle. She looked down, and found Yang clinging to her leg.

"Stop," breathed the smaller girl.

"Yang, what are you doing? We're so close! Let go!"

"Please, stop."

"Get off of me!" She shook her leg, but failed to dislodge Yang. Silene looked back over her shoulder. Winter Schnee was gone. There was no hope now. Despair burned into rage. She tugged against Yang's weight once more. She moved her leg, but she was not going anywhere. With a grunt, she raised her left leg and kicked the clinging girl in the face. Yang released her grip and sprawled backwards in the grass.

"What the hell, Yang?!"

Yang didn't really know what the hell, either. Pain arced through her face, a hot numbness with sharp edges. She hadn't been ready, hadn't used any Aura. She put her hand to her cheek and it came back warm and wet and red. What had happened? She had figured something out, she remembered. Put pieces together. Some secret had been revealed.

"You're wrong," she whispered. The pain in her face was travelling to the back of her head.

"What?"

"All of this is wrong," Yang sobbed.

"What do you mean, wrong? We're doing the right thing! They're the enemy! They hurt people, Yang!"

Yang coughed and realized that there was blood in her mouth too. "You hurt people. You made me hurt people."

"To teach them a lesson! You have to change people's minds somehow!"

"No," said Yang. "Nobody changed their mind. You just hurt people because you want to."

"I thought you were different, Yang," Silene spat. "I thought maybe your head wasn't polluted with shit like everyone else's. I thought we could get along. That this wasn't 'us' and 'them', but 'we'! But I guess I was _wrong_ ," she snarled, driving her foot into Yang's side. "That's how all of this is going to be! The whole world really _does_ work like that! It's simple! Just so simple!" She kicked Yang again. "You are _just so dumb!_ "

Yang couldn't feel much of anything anymore. She knew Silene was hitting her, but she couldn't process it. The only thing her world was made of was the pain in her head. It pulsed and grew with each second, each wave straying further and further out into her body. Her vision blurred. Colors faded out. Silene was still there, shadowy, distant. The way she talked made everything sound so important. There was something she said about pain. Lessons. School? No, she couldn't figure it out. Yang felt weightless. The pain was everywhere now, her stomach, her fingertips, her skin. She had felt it before, in the bar. And before that, she realized, when she stuck her finger in a lit candle. Burning, all over. Impossible heat, surrounding, consuming. She placed her weightless hands on the ground and pushed, moved her weightless feet underneath her and stood. Silene stepped back. Was she surprised? Yang wondered if she herself was surprised. But she couldn't really think. She tried to think about why she couldn't, and that was when she exploded.

Silene fell backwards, blind and deaf. She could still feel, and the ground that suddenly met her hands was trembling. She blinked the light out of her eyes, but as her vision returned she had to look away once more. Windows in buildings across the campus shattered. The temperature, previously average for a spring day, transformed into an oppressive swelter. Silene held a hand out, screening her face from the searing eruption. It was as if the sun had lighted on the ground. It was a blaze the likes of which Silene had never seen before- it had a force, an intensity, a _direction_ just like a jet engine. But it blasted upwards, flames searing the sky. Inside the column of flame, two red orbs glowed like molten metal.

"H-holy shit," she stammered, regaining her footing. The wind whipped around the fire, gale force, pulling at her clothes, tugging her hair back. Dirt and rocks began to give way to the storm, propelled into the air. They scraped and bit at her skin as Silene struggled to make out the center of the inferno. It had a shape, radiant but familiar. It was human. It was Yang.

The confusion that had filled Yang's head was gone. The world, as she perceived it, seemed very clear to her. It was white, poorly-defined at the edges, but easily understood. In front of her was Silene. Silene had hurt her. She was going to hurt Silene back. She pushed off the ground with her left foot and drove her right fist into the Faunus' face. She felt a satisfying impact travel down the length of her arm as the blurry black-and-white figure sailed away, head-over-heels, into the dirt.

Qrow stood, stunned out of motion, outside of the administration building. The tremors were small and steady, while the pillar of flame in the distance continued to convulse and fluctuate. This wasn't magic, he could _feel_ it, the way the energy sang as it danced around his Aura. It was a Semblance.

Yang slowly crossed the field to Silene's crash site. The Faunus held her head, her teeth gritted in agony. Her hand brushed against one of her horns, and the tip crumbled off in her fingers. She gasped, and choked down a pained sob. Then she met Yang's burning red gaze.

"That's… pretty… impressive," she grimaced. "I… I guess… we're all monsters, deep down." Silene gave a short, pained laugh. "You're right… I didn't change my mind."

Yang felt something cold sweep over her, icy, empty. She fell to her knees, feeling the opposite of weightless. Color and edges returned to the world, and the burning went away. She remembered that this was what the world usually felt like.

Silene sat still and kept laughing that short, whimpering laugh. Yang felt herself lifted into the air, pressed against a familiar-smelling chest. Her father.

"Hey- it's all right, it's over," he said. Over his shoulder she could see Qrow sprinting their way, with Winter and a white-uniformed man not far behind. Her father was wrong. Whatever had just happened was not an ending. The white-uniformed man locked a pair of handcuffs on Silene and prodded her to stand at the point of a large handgun. A cloud passed over the sun and shadows crawled out into the world.

Ten years old, and Yang felt alone again.

* * *

Ruby stuck her finger into the center of the scroll, indicating the part of the map that glowed green. "Riiiiiight there!" she announced.

"Your big solution is for us to hide in the Emerald Forest?" asked Weiss.

Ruby shook her head. "Nope! We're not going there to hide. We're going there to fight!"

Weiss folded her hands in her lap and looked down at Ruby from her bunk bed perch. "That's the worst idea I've ever heard," she said politely.

"It makes sense," Blake refuted, pausing her calibrations of Gambol Shroud's sheath lock spring. "We're already familiar with it from our initiation, and we can get there easily. It also serves to isolate the battle from the rest of the school."

"Exactly. We'll have a home turf advantage, and if she follows us there, she'll have her back against the wall. Or a cliff, to be technical."

Weiss hefted herself down to the floor. "We'd have to be on our guard against Grimm in the area, though."

"There's just one of her and four of us. Multitasking should be easy," Ruby countered.

"We can't assume that anything about this will be easy," said Blake. "We don't know anything about our opponent. The little Yang told us doesn't have any bearing on what she's like now, so we're going in blind. That being said, the Grimm would potentially be just as much of a threat to her as they are to us."

Weiss nodded. "At least that much evens out."

The door clicked open, and a disheveled-looking Yang stepped inside, a towel draped around her neck.

"You okay, Yang?" asked Ruby.

"If I said I was, I'd be lying," her sister answered.

"We're here for you, if you need us," offered Weiss.

"Thanks, Weiss. All of you, really. I don't know where I'd be without you."

"Alone, probably," Blake mused.

"Guess I would be," Yang smiled as she crossed the dorm to her closet. She fished out her jacket and boots and tossed them on top of her bed. While she had been throttling the workout room's punching bag, it had finally sunk in. Seven years ago, she got lost in the woods. Today, she was going to fight her way out of them. This time, she wasn't alone.


End file.
